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THE  NOVELS  OF  ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 

CHILDREN  OF  THE  GHETTO 

DREAMERS  OF  THE  GHETTO 

GHETTO  COMEDIES 

GHETTO  TRAGEDIES 

THE  GREY  WIG 

THE  KING  OF  SCHNORRERS 

THE  MANTLE  OF  ELIJAH 

THE  MASTER 

THEY  THAT  WALK  IN  DARKNESS 

THE  CELIBATES'  CLUB 

WITH  LOUIS  COWEN 
THE  PREMIER  AND  THE  PAINTER 


Jinny  the  Carrier 


NEW  NOVELS:   7s.  NET  EACH 

THE  THREE  BLACK  PENNYS 
Joseph  Hergesheimer 

(In  preparation,  by  the  same  author) 
JAVA  HEAD 

THE  MOON  AND  SIXPENCE 
Somerset  Maugham 

STORM  IN  A  TEACUP 
Eden  Phillpotts 

THE  ROLLING  STONE 
C.  A.  Dawson  Scott 

A  SAILOR'S  HOME  and  Other  Stories 
Richard  Dehan 

THE  OLD  MADHOUSE 

A  posthumous  novel  by 
William  de  Morgan 

THE  BONFIRE 

Anthony  Brendon 


Jinny  the  Carrier 


By 


Israel    Zangwill 


LONDON:   WILLIAM   HEINEMANN 


EPISTLE   DEDICATORY 

Dear  Mistress  of  Bassetts, 

You  and  Audrey  have  so  often  proclaimed  the  need 
— ^in  our  world  of  sorrow  and  care — of  a  "  bland  "  novel, 
defining  it  as  one  to  be  read  when  in  bed  with  a  sore  throat, 
that  as  an  adventurer  in  letters  I  have  frequently  felt 
tempted  to  write  one  for  you.  But  the  spirit  bloweth 
where  it  listeth,  and  seemed  perversely  to  have  turned 
against  novels  altogether,  perhaps  because  I  had  been 
labelled  "  novelist,"  as  though  one  had  set  up  a  factory. 
(Two  a  year  is,  I  believe,  the  correct  output.)  However, 
here  is  a  novel  at  last — my  first  this  century — and  th,ere 
is  a  further  reason  for  presuming  to  associate  you  with  it, 
because  it  is  largely  from  the  vantage-point  of  your  Essex 
homestead  that  I  have,  during  the  past  twenty  years, 
absorbed  the  landscape,  character,  and  dialect  which  finally 
insisted  on  finding  expression,  first  in  a  little  play,  and  now 
in  this  elaborate  canvas.  How  often  have  I  passed  over 
High  Field  and  seen  the  opulent  valley — tilth  and  pasture 
and  ancient  country  seats — stretching  before  me  like  a  great 
poem,  with  its  glint  of  -^Ainding  water,  and  the  exquisite 
blue  of  its  distances,  and  Bassetts  awaiting  me  below, 
snuggling  under  its  mellow  moss-stained  tiles,  a  true  English 
home  of  "  plain  living  and  high  thinking,"  and  latterly  of  the 
rural  Muse  !  I  can  only  hope  that  some  breath  of  the  in- 
spiration which  has  emanated  from  Bassetts  in  these  latter 

428500 


vi  EPISTLE  DEDICATORY 

days,  and  which  has  set  its  picturesquely  clad  poetesses 
turning  rhymes  as  enthusiastically  as  clods,  and  weaving 
rondels  as  happily  as  they  bound  the  sheaves,  has  been 
wafted  over  these  more  prosaic  pages — something  of  that 
"  wood-magic "  which  your  granddaughter — soul  of  the 
idyllic  band — has  got  into  her  song  of  your  surroundings. 

^he  glint  of  blue  where  the  estuary  flows ^ 

Or  a  shimmering  mist  o'er  the  valets  green  and  gold  : 
A  little  grey  church  which  ^mid  willow-trees  shows  ; 

A  house  on  the  hillside  so  good  to  behold 
With  its  yellow  plaster  and  red  tiles  old, 

The  clematis  climbing  in  purple  and  green, 
And  down  in  the  garden  ^mid  hollyhocks  bold 

Sit  Kathleen,  Ursula,  Helen,  and  Jean, 

And  yet  it  must  not  be  thought  that  either  "  Bassetts  " 
or  "  Little  Baddow  "  figures  in  the  "  Little  Bradmarsh  " 
of  my  story.  The  artist  cannot  be  tied  down  :  he  creates 
a  composite  landscape  to  his  needs.  Moreover,  in  these  last 
four  or  five  years  a  zealous  constabulary  can  testify  out 
of  w^hat  odds  and  ends  the  strange  inquiring  figure,  who 
walked,  cycled,  or  rode  in  carriers'  carts  to  forgotten  hamlets 
or  sea-marshes,  has  composed  his  background.  Nor  have  I 
followed  photographic  realism  even  in  my  dialect,  deeming 
the  Cockneyish  forms,  except  when  unconsciously  amusing, 
too  ugly  to  the  eye  in  a  long  sustained  narrative,  though 
enjoyable  enough  in  those  humorous  sketches  which  my 
friend  Bensusan,  the  true  conquistador  of  Essex,  pours  forth 
so  amazingly  from  his  inexhaustible  cornucopia.  I  differ — 
in  all  diffidence — from  his  transcription  on  the  sole  point 
that  the  Essex  rustic  changes  "  i  "  into  "  oi  "  in  words  like 
"  while,"  though  why  on  the  other  hand  "  boil  "  should  go 


EPISTLE  DEDICATORY  vii 

back  to  "  bile  "  can  be  explained  only  by  the  perversity 
which  insists  on  taking  aspirates  off  the  right  words  and 
clapping  them  on  the  wrong,  much  as  Cockney  youths  and 
girls  exchange  hats  on  Bank  Holiday.  I  have  limited  my 
own  employment  of  this  local  vowelling  mainly  to  the  first 
person  singular  as  sufficiently  indicative  of  the  rest.  In  the 
old  vexed  question  of  the  use  of  dialect,  my  feeling  is  that 
its  value  is  simply  as  colour,  and  that  the  rich  old  words, 
obsolete  or  unknown  elsewhere,  contribute  this  more  effec- 
tively and  far  more  beautifully  than  vagaries  of  pronuncia- 
tion, itself  a  very  shifting  factor  of  language  even  in  the 
best  circles.  It  is  not  even  necessary  for  the  artistic  effect 
that  the  reader  should  understand  the  provincial  words, 
though  the  context  should  be  so  contrived  as  to  make 
them  fairly  intelligible.  In  short,  art  is  never  nature, 
though  it  should  conceal  the  fact.  Even  the  slowness  and 
minuteness  of  my  method — ^imposed  as  it  is  by  the  attempt 
to  seize  the  essence  of  Essex — are  immeasurable  velocity  and 
breadth  compared  with  the  scale  of  reality. 

In  bringing  this  rustic  complex  under  the  category  of 
comedy  I  clash,  I  am  aware,  with  literary  fashion,  which 
demands  that  country  folk  should  appear  like  toiling  insects 
caught  in  the  landscape  as  in  a  giant  web  of  Fate,  though 
why  the  inhabitants  of  Belgravia  or  Clapham  escape  this 
tragic  convention  I  cannot  understand.  But  I  do  not  think 
that  you,  dear  Aunt  by  adoption,  see  the  life  around  you  like 
that.  Even,  however,  bad  you  and  I  seen  more  gloomily, 
the  fashionable  fatalistic  framework  would  have  been  clearly 
inconsistent  with  the  "  blandness  "  of  your  novel.  Such 
a  novel  must,  I  conceive,  begin  with  "  once  upon  a  time  " 
and  end  with  "  they  all  lived  happy  ever  after,"  so  that  my 
task  was  simply  to  fill  in  the  lacuna   between   these  two 


viii  EPISTLE  DEDICATORY 

points,  and  supply  the  early-Victorian  mottoes,  while  even 
the  material  was  marked  out  for  me  by  Dr.  Johnson's  defini- 
tion of  a  novel  as  "  a  story  mainly  about  love."  I  am  hope- 
ful that  when  you  come  to  read  it  (not,  I  trust,  with  a  sore 
throat),  you  will  admit  that  I  have  at  least  tried  to  make  my 
dear  "  Jinny  "  really  "  live  happy  ever  after,"  even  though 
— ^in  the  fierce  struggle  for  literary  survival — she  is  far  from 
likely  to  do  so.  But  at  any  rate,  if  only  for  the  moment, 
I  should  be  glad  if  I  had  succeeded  in  expressing  through 
her  my  grateful  appreciation  of  the  beautiful  country  in 
which  my  lot,  like  Jinny's,  has  been  cast,  with  its  many 
lovable  customs  and  simple,  kindly  people. 

Your  affectionate  Nephew, 

THE  AUTHOR 

Sussex 

New  Year  1919 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

PREAMBLE  i 

I.  BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  4 

II.  JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  34 

III.  JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  70 

IV.  WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  100 
V.  WILL  AT  HOME  154 

VI.  SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  195 

VII.  COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        234 

VIII.  CUPID  AND  CATTLE  264 

IX.  TWO  OF  A  TRADE  320 

X.  HORSE,  GROOM,  AND^BRIDE  357 

XL  WINTER'S  TALE  432 

XII.  WRITTEN  IN  WATER  472 

XIIL  THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  503 


JINNY  THE  CARRIER 


PREAMBLE 

/'//  tell  you  who  Time  ambles  withal, 

"  As  You  Like  It.'^ 

Once  upon  a  time — but  then  it  was  more  than  oncej  it  was^  m 
fact,  every  Tuesday  and  Friday — Jinny  the  Carrier,  of  Black- 
water  Hall,  Little  Bradmarsh,  went  the  round  with  her  tilt-cart 
from  that  torpid  Essex  village  on  the  Brad,  through  Long, 
Bradmarsh  (over  the  brick  bridge)  to  worldly,  bustling  Chipstone, 
and  thence  home  again  through  the  series  of  droughty  hamlets" 
with  public  pumps  that  curved  back — if  one  did  not  take  the 
wrong  turning  at  the  Four  Wantz  Way — to  her  too  aqueous 
birthplace :  baiting  her  horse,  Methusalem,  at  "  The  Black 
Sheep  "  in  Chipstone  like  the  other  carters  and  wagoners,  sporting 
a  dog  with  a  wicked  eye  and  a  smart  collar,  and  even  blowing  a 
horn  as  if  she  had  been  the  red-coated  guard  of  the  Chelmsford 
coach  sweeping  grandly  to  his  goal  down  the  High  Street  of 
Chipstone. 

Do  you  question  more  precisely  when  this  brazen  female 
flourished  ?  The  answer  may  be  given  with  the  empty  exactitude 
of  science  and  scholarship.  Her  climacteric  was  to  the  globe  at 
large  the  annus  mirabilis  of  the  Great  Exhibition,  when  the  lion 
and  the  lamb  lay  down  together  in  Hyde  Park  in  a  crystal 
cage.  But  though  the  advent  of  the  world-trumpeted  Millennium 
could  not  wholly  fail  to  percolate  even  to  Little  Bradmarsh.  a 
more  veracious  chronology,  a  history  truer  to  local  tradition, 
would  date  the  climax  of  Jinny's  unmaidenly  career  as  "  before 
the  Flood." 

Not,  of  course — as  the  mention  of  Methusalem  might  mislead 

A 


2  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

you  into  thinking-— the  Flood  which  is  still  commemorated  in 
toyshops  and  Babylonian  tablets,  and  anent  which  German 
scholars  miraculously  contrive  to  be  dry ;  but  the  more  momen- 
tous local  Deluge  when  the  Brad,  perversely  swollen,  washed 
away  cattle,  mangold  clamps,  and  the  Holy  Sabbath  in  one  fell 
surge,  leaving  the  odd  wooden  gable  of  Frog  Farm  looming 
above  the  waste  of  waters  as  nautically  as  Noah's  Ark. 

In  those  antediluvian  days,  and  in  that  sequestered  hundred, 
farm-horses  were  the  ruling  fauna  and  set  the  pace ;  the  average 
of  which  Methusalem,  with  his  "  jub  "  or  cross  between  a  lazy 
trot  and  a  funeral  procession,  did  little  to  elevate.  It  was  not 
till  the  pride  of  life  brought  a  giddier  motion  that  the  Flood — 
but  we  anticipate  both  moral  and  story.  Let  us  go  rather  at 
the  Arcadian  amble  of  the  days  before  the  Deluge,  when  the 
bicycle — even  of  the  early  giant  order — had  not  yet  arisen  to 
terrorize  the  countryside  with  its  rotiferous  mobility,  still  less 
the  motor-mammoth  swirling  through  the  leafy  lanes  in  a  dust- 
fog  and  smelling  like  a  super-skunk,  or  the  air-monster  out- 
soaring  and  out-Sataning  the  broomsticked  witch.  It  is  true 
that  Bundock,  Her  Majesty's  postman,  had  once  brought  word 
of  a  big-bellied  creature,  like  a  bloated  Easter-egg,  hovering  over 
the  old  maypole  as  if  meditating  to  impale  itself  thereon,  like  a 
bladder  on  a  stick.  But  normally  not  even  the  mail  or  a  post- 
chaise  divided  the  road  with  Master  Bundock  ;  while,  as  for  the 
snorting  steam-horse  that  bore  off  the  young  Bradmarshians, 
once  they  had  ventured  as  far  as  roaring  railhead,  it  touched  the 
postman's  imagination  no  more  than  the  thousand-ton  sea- 
monsters  with  flapping  membranes  or  cloud-spitting  gullets  that 
rapt  them  to  the  lands  of  barbarism  and  gold. 

Blessed  Bundock,  genial  Mercury  of  those  days  before  the 
Flood,  if  the  rubbered  wheel  of  the  postdiluvian  age  might  have 
better  winged  thy  feet,  yet  thy  susceptible  eye — that  rested  all- 
embracingly  on  female  gleaners — was  never  darkened  by  the 
sight  of  the  soulless  steel  reaper,  cropping  close  like  a  giant 
goose,  and  thou  wast  equally  spared  that  mechanic  flail-of-all- 
work  that  drones  through  the  dog-days  like  a  Brobdingnagian 
bumble-bee.  For  thine  happier  ear  the  cottages  yet  hummed 
with  the  last  faint  strains  of  the  folk-song:  unknown  in  thy 
sylvan  perambulations  that  queer  metalHc  parrot,  hoarser  even 
than  the  raucous  reality,  which  now  wakens  and  disenchants 
every  sleepy  hollow  with  echoes  of  the  London  music-hall. 


PREAMBLE  3 

Rural  Essex  was  long  the  unchanging  East,  and  there  are  still 
ploughmen  who  watch  the  airmen  thunder  by,  then  plunge  into 
their  prog  again.  The  shepherds  who  pour  their  fleecy  streams 
between  its  hedgerows  are  still  as  primitive  as  the  herdsmen  of 
Chaldea,  and  there  are  yokels  who  dangle  sideways  from  their 
slow  beasts  as  broodingly  as  the  Bedouins  of  Palestine.  Even 
to-day  the  spacious  elm-bordered  landscapes  through  which 
Jinny's  cart  rolled  and  her  dog  circumambiently  darted,  lie 
ignored  of  the  picture  postcard,  and  on  the  red  spinal  chimney- 
shaft  of  Frog  Farm  the  doves  settle  with  no  air  of  perching  for 
their  photographs.  Little  Bradmarsh  is  still  Little,  still  the 
most  reclusive  village  of  all  that  delectable  champaign  ;  the 
Brad  still  glides  between  its  willows  unruffled  by  picnic  parties 
and  soothed  rather  than  disturbed  by  rusty,  ancient  barges. 
But  when  Gran'fer  Quarles  first  brought  little  Jinny  to  these 
plashy  bottoms,  the  region  it  watered — not  always  with  discretion 
— was  unknown  even  to  the  gipsy  caravans  and  strolling  show- 
men, and  quite  outside  the  circuit  of  the  patterers  and  chaunters 
who  stumped  the  country  singing  or  declaiming  lampoons  on 
the  early  Victoria  ;  not  a  day's  hard  tramp  from  Seven  Dials 
where  they  bought  their  ribald  broadsheets,  yet  as  remote  as 
Arabia  Felix. 


CHAPTER  I 
BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT 

He  comes,  the  herald  of  a  noisy  world. 
With  spattered  boots, 

CowPER,  "  The  Task." 

I 

It  had  rained  that  April  more  continuously  than  capriciously, 
but  this  morning  April  showed  at  last  her  fairer  face.  The  sun- 
shine held  as  yet  no  sense  of  heat,  only  the  bracingness  of  a  glad 
salt  wave.  Across  the  spacious  blue  of  the  Essex  sky  clouds 
floated  and  met  and  parted  in  a  restful  restlessness.  The  great 
valley  swam  in  a  blue  sea  of  vapour.  Men  trod  as  on  buoyant 
sunshine  that  bore  them  along.  The  buds  were  peeping  out 
from  every  hedge  and  tree,  the  blackthorn  was  bursting  into 
white,  the  whole  world  seemed  like  a  child  tiptoeing  towards 
some  delightful  future.  Primroses  nestled  in  every  hollow :  the 
gorse  lay  golden  on  the  commons.  The  little  leaves  of  the  trees 
seemed  shy,  scarcely  grown  familiar  with  the  fluttering  of  the 
birds.  All  the  misery,  pain,  and  sadness  had  faded  from  creation 
like  a  bad  dream  :  the  stains  and  pollutions  were  washed  out, 
leaving  only  the  young  clean  beauty  of  the  first  day.  It  was  a 
virgin  planet,  fresh  from  the  hands  of  its  Maker,  trembling  with 
morning  dew — an  earth  that  had  never  seen  its  own  blossoming. 
And  the  paean  of  all  this  peace  and  innocence  throbbed  exultingly 
in  bird-music  through  all  the  great  landscape.  Over  the  orchard 
of  Frog  Farm  there  were  only  two  larks,  but  you  would  have 
thought  a  whole  orchestra. 

A  blot  against  this  background  seemed  the  blood-red  shirt  of 
Caleb  Flynt  in  that  same  orchard ;  a  wild  undulating  piece  of 
primeval  woodland  where  plum-trees  and  pear-trees  indeed 
flourished,  but  not  more  so  than  oaks  and  chestnuts,  briars  and 
brambles,  or  fairy  mists  of  bluebells.     The  task  of  regenerating  it 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  5 

had  been  annually  postponed,  but  now  that  Caleb  was  no  longer 
the  Frog  Farm  '*  looker,"  it  formed,  like  his  vegetable  garden, 
his  wheat  patch,  or  his  wife's  piggery,  a  pleasant  pottering- 
ground.  He  worked  without  coat  or  smock,  chastening  the 
tanker  grass  while  the  dew  was  still  on  it — or  in  his  own  idiom, 
"  while  the  dag  was  on  the  herb."  White-bearded  and  scythe- 
bearing,  he  suggested — although  the  beard  was  short  and  round 
and  he  wore  a  shapeless  grey  hat — a  figure  of  Father  Time, 
incarnadined  from  all  his  wars.  But  in  sooth  no  creature 
breathed  more  at  one  with  the  earth's  mood  that  morning  than 
this  ancient  "  Peculiar,"  whose  parlour  bore  as  its  text  of  honour 
— in  white  letters  on  a  lozenge  of  brown  paper  :  "  When  He 
giveth  quietness,  who  then  can  make  trouble  ?  " 

Quietness  was,  indeed,  all  around  him  in  this  morning  fresh- 
ness :  the  swish  of  the  scythe,  the  murmurous  lapse  of  shorn 
grass,  the  drone  of  insects,  the  cooing  of  pigeons  from  the  cote, 
the  elusive  cry  of  the  new-come  cuckoo,  seemed  forms  of  silence 
rather  than  of  sound.  And  his  inner  peace  matched  his  outer, 
for,  as  his  arms  automatically  wielded  the  scythe,  his  soul  was 
actually  in  heaven — or  at  least  in  the  New  Jerusalem  which, 
according  to  his  wife's  novel  Christadelphian  creed,  was  to  be 
let  down  from  heaven  for  the  virtuous  remnant  of  earth — and  at 
no  distant  date  !  Not  that  he  definitely  believed  in  her  descend- 
ing city,  though  he  felt  a  certain  proprietary  interest  in  it.  "  Oi 
don't  belong  to  Martha's  Church,"  he  reassured  his  brethren  of 
the  Peculiar  faith,  "  but  Oi  belongs  to  she  and  she  belongs  to 
me." 

In  this  mutual  belonging  he  felt  himself  the  brake  and  Martha 
the  spirited  mare  who  could  never  stand  still.  No  doubt  her 
argument  that  we  were  here  to  learn  and  to  move  forward  was 
plausible  enough — ^how  could  he  traverse  it,  he  who  had  himself 
changed  from  Churchman  to  Peculiar  ?  But  her  rider :  "  We 
don't  leave  the  doctrine,  we  carry  it  with  us,"  struck  him  as 
somewhat  shifty.  And  her  move  from  "  Sprinkling  "  to  "  Total 
Immersion  " — even  if  the  submergence  did  in  a  sense  include  the 
sprinkling — ^was  surely  enough  progression  for  one  lifetime.  He 
did  not  like  "  this  gospel  of  gooin'  forrard "  :  an  obstinate 
instinct  warned  him  to  hold  back,  though  with  an  uneasy  recog- 
nition that  her  ceaseless  explorations  of  her  capacious  Bible — to 
him  a  sealed  book — must  naturally  yield  discoveries  denied  to 
his  less  saintly  and  altogether  illiterate  self.     Discoveries  indeed 


6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

had  not  been  spared  him.  Ever  since  she  had  joined  those  new- 
fangled Christadelphians — "  Christy  Dolphins "  as  he  called 
them — she  had  abounded  in  texts  as  crushing  as  they  were 
unfamiliar  ;  and  even  the  glib  Biblical  patter  he  had  picked  up 
from  the  PecuUars  was  shown  to  imply  at  bottom  the  new 
teaching.  Curtain  lectures  are  none  the  less  tedious  when  they 
are  theological,  and  after  a  course  of  many  months — each  with 
its  twenty-eight  to  thirty-one  nights — Caleb  Flynt  was  grown 
w^earisomely  learned  in  the  bold  doctrine  launched  by  the  great 
John  Thomas  that  "  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth  "  actually 
meant  on  earth  and  must  be  brought  about  there  and  nowhere 
else,  and  that  Immortality  enjoyed  except  in  one's  terrestrial 
body — however  spiritualized — ^was  as  absurd  a  notion  as  that  it 
v;as  lavished  indiscriminately  upon  Tom,  Giles,  and  Jerry. 

The  worst  of  it  was  he  could  never  be  sure  Martha  was  not  in 
the  right — she  had  certainly  modified  his  belief  in  "  Sprinkling  " 
— and  he  fluttered  around  her  "  New  Jerusalem  "  like  a  moth 
around  a  lighthouse.  Had  anybody  given  a  penny  for  his 
thoughts  as  he  stooped  now  over  his  scythe,  the  fortunate 
investor  would  have  come  into  possession  of  "  the  street  of  pure 
gold,  as  it  were  transparent  glass,"  not  to  mention  the  sapphires 
and  emeralds,  the  beryls  and  chrysolites  and  all  the  other  shining 
swarms  of  precious  stones  catalogued  in  Revelation.  If  he  had 
kept  from  her  the  rumour  that  had  reached  his  own  ears  of  such 
a  treasure-city  of  glass  actually  arising  in  London  at  this  very 
moment,  it  was  not  because  he  believed  this  was  veritably  her 
celestial  city,  but  because  it  might  possibly  excite  her  credulity 
to  the  pitch  of  wishing  to  see  it.  And  the  thought  of  a  journey 
was  torture.  Already  Martha  had  dropped  hints  about  the 
difficulties  of  "  upbuilding  "  in  the  lack  of  local  Christadelphians 
to  institute  a  "  Lightstand "  :  the  wild  dream  of  some  day 
breaking  bread  in  an  "  Ecclesia  "  in  London  had  been  adum- 
brated :  it  was  possible  the  restless  female  mind  even  contem- 
plated London  itself  as  a  place  to  be  seen  before  one  died. 

But  surely  the  New  Jerusalem,  if  it  descended  at  all,  would — ^he 
felt — descend  here,  at  Little  Bradmarsh.  A  heaven  that  meant 
girding  up  one's  loins  and  wrenching  out  one's  roots  was  a  very 
problematic  paradise,  for  all  the  splendour  with  which  his  inward 
eye  was  now,  despite  himself,  dazzled. 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT 


II 


From  this  jewelled  Jerusalem  Caleb  was  suddenly  brought 
back  to  the  breathing  beauty  of  our  imperfect  earth,  to  pear- 
blossom  and  plum-blosson,  to  the  sun-glinted  shadows  under  his 
trees  and  the  mellow  tiles  of  his  roof.  The  sound  of  his  own 
name  fell  from  on  high — like  the  city  of  his  daydream — accom- 
panied by  a  great  skirring  of  wings,  and  looking  up  dazedly,  the 
pearly  gates  still  shimmering,  his  eye  followed  the  tarred  side- 
wall  of  the  farmhouse  till,  near  the  roof,  it  lit  upon  his  wife's 
night-capped  head  protruded  from  the  tiny  diamond-paned 
casement  that  alone  broke  the  sheer  black  surface  of  the  wood. 

A  sense  of  the  unusual  quickened  his  pulses.  It  stole  upon 
him,  not  mainly  from  Martha's  face,  which,  despite  its  excited 
distension,  wore — over  wrinkles  he  never  saw — the  same  russet 
complexion  and  was  crowned  by  the  same  glory  of  unblanched 
brown  hair  that  had  gladdened  his  faithful  eyes  since  the 
beginning  of  the  century ;  but,  more  subtly  and  subconsciously, 
through  the  open  lattice  which  framed  this  ever-enchanting 
vision.  In  the  Flynt  tradition,  windows — restricted  at  best  by 
the  window  tax  still  in  force — were  for  light,  not  air.  Had  folks 
wanted  air,  they  would  have  poked  a  hole  in  the  wall ;  not  built 
a  section  of  it  "  of  transparent  glass."  People  so  much  under 
the  sky  as  Caleb  and  Martha  Flynt  had  no  need  to  invite  colds 
by  artificial  draughts.  They  were  getting  a  change  of  air  all  day 
long.  But  their  rooms — their  small,  low-ceiled  rooms — were  not 
thus  vivified,  even  in  their  absence ;  the  ground-floor  windows 
were  indeed  immovable,  and  an  immemorial  mustiness  made  a 
sort  of  slum  atmosphere  in  this  spacious,  sun-washed  solitude. 
Hence  Caleb's  sense  of  a  jar  in  his  universe  at  the  familiar,  flat 
pattern  of  the  wall  dislocated  into  a  third  dimension  by  the  out- 
flung  casement  :  a  prodigy  which  he  was  not  surprised  to  find 
fluttering  the  dovecot,  and  which  presaged,  he  felt,  still  vaster 
cataclysms.  And  to  add  to  the  auspices  of  change,  he  observed 
another  piebald  pigeon  among  his  snowy  flock. 

"  Yes,  dear  heart,"  he  called  up,  disguising  his  uneasiness  and 
shearing  on. 

Martha  pointed  a  fateful  finger  towards  the  high-hedged,  oozy 
path  meandering  beyond  the  orchard  gate,  and  dividing  the 
sown  land  from  the  pastures  sloping  to  the  Brad.  "  There's 
Bundock  coming  up  the  Green  Lane  !  " 


8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

*'  Bundock  ?  "  gasped  Caleb,  the  scythe  stopping  short. 
^^  You're  a-dreamin'."  That  Brother  Bundock,  who  had  been 
prayed  over  for  a  decade  by  himself  and  every  Peculiar  in  the 
vicinity,  should  at  last  have  taken  up  his  bed  and  walked,  was 
too  sudden  a  proof  of  their  tenets,  and  the  natural  man  blurted 
out  his  disbelief, 

^*  But  I  see  his  red  jacket,"  Martha  protested,  "  his  bag  on  his 
shoulder." 

"  Ow  !  "  His  tone  was  divided  between  relief  and  disappoint- 
ment. "  You  mean  Bundock's  buoy-oy  !  "  He  drew  out  the 
word  even  longer  than  usual,  and  it  rose  even  beyond  the  high 
pitch  his  Essex  twang  habitually  gave  to  his  culminating  phrases. 
"  Whatever  can  Posty  be  doin'  in  these  pa-arts  ?  "  he  went  on, 
with  a  new  wonder. 

"  And  the  chace  that  squashy,"  said  Martha,  who  from  her 
coign  of  vantage  could  see  the  elderly  figure  labouring  in  the 
remoter  windings,  "  he's  sinking  into  it  at  every  step." 

"Ay,  the  mud's  only  hazeled  over.  Whatever  brings  the  silly 
youth  when  the  roads  be  in  that  state  ?  " 

"  It'll  be  the  Census  again  !  "  groaned  Martha. 

Caleb's  brow  gloomed.  He  feared  Martha  was  right,  and 
anything  official  must  have  to  do  with  that  terrible  paper-fiUing 
which  had  at  last  by  the  aid  of  Jinny  been,  they  had  hoped, 
finally  accomplished  some  weeks  before.  Ever  since  the  first 
English  census  had  been  taken  in  the  first  year  of  the  century, 
Martha  had  been  expecting  a  plague  to  fall  upon  the  people  as 
it  had  upon  the  Israelites  when  King  David  numbered  them. 
But  although  she  had  been  disappointed,  there  was  no  doubt  of 
the  plague  of  the  Census  itself. 

^'  Haps  it's  a  letter  for  the  shepherd,"  hazarded  Caleb  to 
vcomfort  her. 

'"  Who'd  be  writing  Master  Peartree  a  letter  ?     He  can't  read." 

'"  Noa ! "  he  answered  complacently,  for  his  wife's  learning 
seemed  part  of  their  mutual  "  belonging."  The  drawbacks  of 
this  vicarious  erudition  were,  however,  revealed  by  his  next 
remark  ;  for  on  Martha  crying  out  that  poor  Bundock  had  sunk 
up  to  his  knees,  Caleb  bade  her  be  easy.  "  He  won't  be  swal- 
lowed up  like  that  minx  Cora  !  " 

But  Martha's  motherly  heart  w^as  too  agitated  to  recognize  the 
Korah  of  her  Biblical  allusions — she  vaguely  assumed  it  was 
some  scarlet  woman  englutted  in  the  slimy  saltings  of  Caleb's 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  9 

birthplace.     "  Run    and   lead    him    into    the    right    path,"    she 
exhorted. 

But  Caleb's  brain  was  not  one  for  quick  reactions.  Inured  for 
nigh  seventy  years  to  a  world  in  which  nothing  happened  too 
suddenly,  even  thunderbolts  giving  reasonable  notice  and  bogs 
getting  boggier  by  due  degrees,  he  stood  dazedly,  his  hands 
paralysed  on  the  nibs  of  his  arrested  scythe.  "  Happen  the  logs 
Oi  put  have  sunk  down  !  "  he  soliloquized  slowly. 

"  If  I  wasn't  in  my  nightgown  I'd  go  myself,"  said  Martha 
impatiently.     "  'Tis  a  lesson  from  the  Lord  not  to  lay  abed." 

"  The  Lord  allows  for  rheumaties,  dear  heart,"  said  Caleb 
soothingly. 

"  He'll  be  up  to  his  neck,  if  you  don't  stir  your  stumps." 

"  Not  he,  Martha.  Unless  he  stands  on  his  head."  Caleb 
meant  this  as  a  literal  contribution  to  the  discussion.  There 
was  no  wilful  topsy-turveydom.  He  was  as  unconscious  of  his 
own  humour  as  of  other  people's. 

"  But  he'll  spoil  his  breeches  anyways,"  retorted  Martha  with 
equal  gravity.  "  And  the  Lord  just  sending  his  wife  a  new 
baby." 

"  Bundock's  breeches  be  the  Queen's,"  said  Caleb  reassuringly. 
But  laying  down  his  scythe,  he  began  to  move  mazedly  adown 
the  orchard,  and  before  the  postman's  mud-cased  leggings  had 
floundered  many  more  rods,  the  veteran  was  sitting  astride  his 
stile,  dangling  his  top-boots  over  a  rotten-planked  brook,  and 
waving  in  his  hairy,  mahogany  hand  his  vast  red  handkerchief 
like  a  danger  signal. 

''  Ahoy,  Posty  !  " 

Bundock  responded  with  a  cheerful  blast  on  his  bugle.  "  Ahoy, 
Uncle  Flynt !  " 

"  Turn  back.     Don't,  ye'U  strike  a  bog-hole." 

"  I  never  go  back  !  "  cried  the  dauntless  Bundock.  And  even 
as  he  spoke,  his  stature  shrank  till  his  bag  rested  on  the  ooze. 

"  The  missus  was  afeared  you'd  spoil  the  Queen's  breeches," 
said  Caleb  sympathetically.  *'  Catch  hold  of  yon  crab-apple 
branch." 

"  Better  spoil  her  breeches  than  be  unfaithful  to  her  uniform," 
said  the  slimy  hero,  struggling  up  as  directed.  "  I've  got  a 
letter  for  you." 

Caleb's  flag  fell  into  the  brook  and  startled  a  water-rat.  "  A 
letter  for  us  I  " 


10  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

He  splashed  into  the  water,  still  dazedly,  to  rescue  his  hand- 
kerchief, avoiding  the  plank  as  a  superfluous  preliminary  to  the 
wetting ;  and,  standing  statuesque  in  mid-stream,  more  like 
Father  Neptune  now  than  Father  Time,  he  continued  incredu- 
lously :   "  Who'd  be  sendin'  us  a  letter  ?  " 

"  That's  not  my  business,"  cried  Bundock  sternly.  He  came 
on  heroically,  disregarding  a  posterior  consciousness  of  damp  clay, 
and  picking  his  way  along  the  grassy,  squashy  strip  that  was 
starred  treacherously  with  peaceful  daisies  and  buttercups,  over- 
hung by  wild  apple-trees,  and  hedged  from  the  fields  on  either 
hand  by  a  tall,  prickly  tangle  and  congestion — as  of  a  vegetable 
slum — in  which  gorse,  holly,  speedwell,  mustard,  and  lily  of  the 
valley  (still  in  green  sheaths),  strove  for  breathing  space.  At 
the  edge  of  a  palpable  mu dhole  he  paused  perforce.  Caleb,  who, 
when  he  recovered  from  his  daze  at  the  news  of  the  letter,  had 
advanced  with  dripping  boots  to  meet  him,  was  equally  arrested 
at  the  opposite  frontier,  and  the  two  men  now  faced  each  other 
across  some  fifteen  feet  of  flowery  ooze,  two  studies  in  red  ; 
Caleb,  big-limbed  and  stolid,  in  his  crimson  shirt,  and  Bundock, 
dapper  and  peart,  in  liis  scarlet  jacket. 

The  postman's  face  was  lightly  pockmarked,  but  found  by 
females  fascinating,  especially  under  the  quasi-military  cap, 
Hairlessness  was  part  of  its  open  charm  :  his  sun-tanned  cheek 
kept  him  juvenile  despite  his  half-century,  and  preserved  from 
rust  his  consciousness  of  a  worshipping  womanhood.  Caleb,  on 
the  contrary,  was  all  hair,  little  bushes  growing  even  out  of  his 
ears,  and  whiskers  and  beard  and  the  silver-grey  mop  at  his 
crown  running  into  one  another  without  frontiers — the  "  Non- 
conformist fringe  "  in  a  ragged  edition. 

"  Sow  sorry  to  give  ye  sow  much  ill-convenience,"  he  called 
apologetically.  ''  Oi  count,"  he  added,  having  had  time  for 
reflection,  "  one  of  our  buoy-oys  has  written  from  furrin  parts. 
And  he  wouldn't  be  knowing  the  weather  here." 

"  'Tain't  any  of  your  boys,"  said  Bundock  crossly,  "  because  it 
comes  from  London." 

"  That's  a  pity.  The  missus'U  get  'sterical  when  she  hears 
it's  for  us,  and  it's  cruel  hard  to  disappoint  her.  There  ain't 
nobody  else  as  we  want  letters  from.  Can't  you  send  it 
back  ?  " 

"  Not  if  I  can  deliver  it,"  said  Bundock  stiffly. 

"  But  ye  can't — unless  you  chuck  it  over." 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  ii 

The  slave  of  duty  shook  his  head.  "  I  daren't  risk  the  Queen's 
mail  like  that." 

"  But  it's  my  letter." 

"  Not  yet,  Uncle  Flynt.  When  it  reaches  your  hand  it  may 
be  considered  safely,  legally,  and  constitutionally  delivered.  But, 
till  then,  'tis  the  Queen's  letter,  and  don't  you  forget  it." 

Caleb  scratched  his  head. 

"  If  'twas  the  Queen's  letter,  she  could  read  it,"  he  urged 
obstinately. 

"  And  so  she  can,"  rejoined  Bundock.  "  She  has  the  right  to 
open  any  letter  smelling  of  high  treason,  so  to  speak,  and  nobody 
can  say  her  nay." 

"  But  my  letter  ain't  high  treasony,"  said  Caleb  indignantly. 
"  And  if  Wictoria  wants  to  read  it,  why  God  bless  her,  says 
Oi." 

Bundock  sighed  before  the  bovinity  of  the  illiterate  mind. 

*'  The  Queen  has  got  better  things  to  do  than  read  every 
scribble  her  head's  stuck  on  to." 

"  Happen  Oi  could  ha'  retched  it  with  a  rake,"  Caleb  mused. 
"  What  a  pity  you  ain't  got  spladges,  like  when  Oi  was  a  buoy-oy, 
and  gatherin'  pin-patches  on  the  sands.  And  fine  and  fat  they 
was  too  when  ye  got  'em  on  the  pin  !  "     His  tongue  clucked. 

Bundock  looked  his  contempt.  "  A  pretty  sight,  Her  Majesty's 
uniform  lumbering  along  like  a  winkle-picker  !  " 

"  Bide  a  bit  then,"  said  Caleb,  "  and  Oi'll  thrash  through  the 
hedge  and  work  through  agen  in  your  rear." 

It  was  a  chivalrous  offer,  for  a  deep  ditch  barred  the  way  to 
the  freshly  ploughed  land,  and  a  tough  and  prickly  chaos  to  the 
pasture  land ;  but  Bundock  declined  churlishly,  if  not  un- 
heroically,  declaring  there  was  a  letter  for  Frog  Cottage  too. 
And  when  Caleb,  recovering  from  this  vindication  of  his  wife's 
prophesyings,  offered  to  transmit  it  to  the  shepherd,  "  What 
guarantee  have  I,"  asked  Bundock,  "  that  it  reaches  him  safely, 
legally,  and  constitutionally  ?  Nay,  nay,  uncle,  a  man  must  do 
his  own  jobs." 

"  Then  work  through  the  bushes  yourself.  Don't,  ye'll  be  fit 
to  grow  crops  on." 

"  Lord,  how  I  hate  going  round — circumbendibus  !  "  groaned 
Bundock.     "  1  might  as  well  be  driving  a  post-cart." 

"  There's  a  mort  of  worser  things  than  gooin'  round, '^  said 
Caleb.     "  And  Oi  do  be  marvelling  a  young  chap  like  you  should 


12  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

mind  a  bit  of  extra  leg-work,  bein'  as  how  ye've  got  naught  else 
to  do  but  to  put  one  leg  afore  the  'tother." 

"  Indeed  ?  "  snapped  Bundockj  this  ignorant  summary  of  his 
duties  aggravating  the  moist  clayey  consciousness  that  resided 
at  the  seat  of  Her  Majesty's  trousers. 

"  Ef  ye  won't  keep  to  the  high  roads,  you  ought  to  git  a  hoss 
what  can  clear  everything,"  Caleb  went  on  to  advise. 

"  And  break  my  neck  ?  " 

"  Posty  always  had  a  hoss  when  I  was  a  cad." 

"  Or  lay  in  the  road  with  a  broken  back  and  Her  Majesty's 
mai]  at  the  mercy  of  every  tramp  ?  "  pursued  Bundock.  "  No, 
no,  one  cripple  in  a  family  is  enough." 

Caleb  looked  pained.  "  You  dedn't  ought  to  talk  o'  your 
feyther  like  that.  And  him  pinchin'  hisself  and  maybe  injurin' 
his  spinal  collar  to  keep  you  at  school  till  you  was  a  large 
buoy-oy !  " 

III 

Bundock's  irritation  at  his  Boeotian  critic  was  suddenly  diverted 
by  the  spectacle  of  a  female  figure  bearing  down  upon  him 
literally  by  leaps  and  bounds — it  seemed  as  if  the  steeplechase 
method  recommended  by  Caleb  was  already  in  action.  The 
postman  felt  for  his  spectacles,  discarded  normally  in  the  interests 
of  manly  fascination.  "  Lord  !  "  he  cried.  "  Has  your  missus 
joined  the  Jumpers  ?  "  Caleb  turned  his  head,  not  unalarmed. 
With  so  skittish  a  theologian  anything  was  possible.  But  his 
agitation  subsided  into  a  smile  of  admiration. 

"  She  thinks  of  everything,"  he  said. 

The  practical  Martha  was  in  fact  advancing  with  an  improvised 
leaping-pole  that  had  already  carried  her  neatly  over  the  brook 
and  would  obviously  bring  Bundock  over  the  boglet.  But  why — 
Caleb  wondered — was  she  risking  her  "  bettermost  "'  skirt  ?  His 
own  mother,  he  remembered,  had  not  hesitated  to  tuck  up  her 
petticoats  when  winkles  had  to  be  gathered.  And  why  was 
Martha's  hair  massed  in  its  black  net  cap  with  a  Sunday 
stylishness  ? 

"  Morning,  Mrs.  Flynt,"  cried  Bundock,  becoming  as  genial  as 
the  weather.  Females,  even  sexagenarian,  so  long  as  not  utterly 
uncomely,  turned  him  from  an  official  into  a  man. 

"  Morning,  Mr.  Bundock  !  "  Martha  called  back  across  the 
mudhole.     "  I  hope  your  father's  no  worse  !  " 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  13 

Bundock's  brow  clouded.     Still  harping  on  his  father. 

"  He's  not  so  active  as  you,"  he  replied  a  bit  testily. 

"  Thank  the  Lord  !  "  said  Caleb  fervently.  Then,  colouring 
under  Bundock's  stare,  "  For  the  missus's  legs,"  he  explained. 

And  to  cover  his  confusion  he  snatched  the  pole  from  her  and 
hurled  it  towards  Bundock,  who  had  barely  time  to  jump  aside 
into  a  still  squidgier  patch.  But  in  another  instant  the  dauntless 
postman  secured  it,  and  with  one  brave  bound — hke  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  stag — had  cleared  the  slimiest  section,  and  his  staggering, 
sliding  form  was  safely  locked  in  Caleb's  sanguineous  shirt- 
sleeves. Safely  but  not  contentedly,  for  at  heart  he  was  deeply 
piqued  at  this  inglorious  position  of  Her  Majesty's  envoy  ;  the 
dignified  newsbearer,  the  beguiler  of  loneliness,  the  gossip 
welcomed  alike  in  the  kitchens  of  the  great  and  the  parlours  of 
the  humble.  Morbidly  conscious  of  his  unpresentable  rear,  he 
kept  carefully  behind  the  couple,  while  Caleb  explained  the 
situation  to  Martha,  breaking  and  blunting  the  news  at  one 
hammer-blow. 

"  There's  a  letter  for  us  !     From  Lunnon  !  " 

Martha  was  wonderful.  "  What  a  piece  !  What  a  master  !  " 
he  thought.  One  might  live  with  a  woman  for  half  a  century, 
yet  never  fathom  her  depths.  Not  a  gasp,  not  a  cry,  not  a  sigh 
of  vain  yearning.  Merely  :  "  Then  it'll  be  from  Cousin  Caroline. 
When  she  went  back  to  London  at  Michaelmas  she  promised  to 
let  us  know  if  she  reached  home  safe,  and  if  your  brother  George 
was  better." 

"  Ay,  ay ! "  he  assented  happily.  "  Oi'd  disremembered 
Cousin  Caroline." 

It  was  a  merciful  oblivion,  for  his  Cockney  cousin  had  come 
from  Limehouse  in  August  and  stayed  two  months,  protesting 
that  it  was  impossible  to  bide  a  day  in  a  place  where  there  wasn't 
a  neighbour  to  speak  to  except  a  silly  shepherd  who  was  never 
at  home  ;  where  water  was  scooped  filthily  from  a  green-scummy 
pond  instead  of  flowing  naturally  from  a  tap  ;  where  on  moonless 
nights  you  could  break  your  leg  at  your  own  doorstep  ;  where 
frogs  croaked  and  cocks  crowed  and  pigeons  moaned  and  foxes 
barked  at  the  unholiest  hours  ;  where  disgusting  vermin  were 
nailed  on  the  trees  and  where  you  broke  out  in  itching  blotches, 
which  folks  might  ascribe  to  "  harvesters,"  but  which  were 
susceptible  of  a  more  domestic  explanation.  Moreover,  Cousin 
Caroline  had  brought  a  profuse  and  uninvited  progeny,  whose 


14  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

unexpected  appearance  in  Jinny's  cart,  though  vaguely  com- 
forting  as  recalling  the  days  when  the  house  resounded  with 
child-life,  was  in  truth  at  disturbing  discord  with  the  Quakerish 
calm  into  which  Frog  Farm  had  subsided  after  the  flight  of  its 
teeming  chicks.  As  Caleb  came  along  now,  convoying  Bundock 
through  the  lush  orchard  grass,  the  echo  of  Cousin  Caroline's 
querulous  voice  rasped  his  brain  and  made  him  wish  she  had 
pretermitted  her  promise  to  write.  As  for  his  ailing  brother 
George,  information  about  whom  she  was  probably  sending,  it 
was  obvious  that  he  was-no  worse,  else  one  would  assuredly  have 
heard  of  his  funeral.  Had  not  George  carefully  let  him  know 
when  he  got  married  ?  Caroline  was  a  Churchwoman — he 
remembered  suddenly — she  had  compromised  Frog  Farm  by 
eking  out  Parson  Fallov/'s  miserable  congregation.  And  now 
she  had  sent  her  letter  just  at  a  season  to  plague  and  muddy 
a  worthy  Dissenter. 

"  Sow  sorry  to  give  ye  sow  much  ill-convenience,  Mr.  Bundock," 
he  repeated,  as  they  reached  the  farmhouse. 


IV 

Frog  Farm,  before  which  Bundock  stood  fumbling  in  his  bag, 
was — as  its  name  implies — situated  in  a  batrachian  region, 
croakily  cheerless  under  a  sullen  sky,  a  region  revealed  under  the 
plough  as  ancient  sedge-land,  black  with  rotted  flags  and  rushes. 
But  the  scene  was  redeemed  at  its  worst  by  the  misty  magni- 
ficence of  great  spaces,  whose  gentle  undulations  could  not 
counteract  a  sublime  flatness  ;  not  to  mention  the  beauty  of  the 
Brad  gHding  like  the  snake  in  the  grass  it  sometimes  proved. 
The  pasture  land  behind  the  farmhouse  and  sloping  softly  down 
to  the  river — across  which,  protected  by  a  dyke  and  drained  by 
little  black  mills  working  turbine  wheels,  lay  the  still  lower  Long 
Bradmarsh — was  the  salvage  of  a  swamp  roughly  provided  with 
a  few,  far-parted  drains  by  some  pioneer  squatter,  content — on 
the  higher  ground  where  a  farmhouse  was  possible — to  fell  and 
slice  his  own  timber  and  bake  his  own  tiles.  At  the  topmost 
rim,  on  a  road  artificially  raised  to  take  its  wagons  to  the  higher 
ground  or  "  Ridge  "  of  the  village,  rose  this  farmhouse  with  its 
buildings,  all  dyked  off  from  the  converted  marsh  by  a  three- 
foot  wall  of  trunk-fragments  and  uncouth  stones,  bordered  by 
bushes.     The  house  turned  its  back  on  the  Brad,  and  had  not 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  15 

even  hind  eyes  to  see  it — another  effect  of  the  window  tax — and 
had  the  rear  of  the  house  not  been  reheved  by  the  quaint  red 
chimney  bisecting  it,  the  blankness  would  have  been  unbearable. 
But  if  little  of  good  could  have  been  said  of  its  architecture 
behind  its  back,  and  if  even  in  front  it  ended  abruptly  at  one 
extremity  like  a  sheer  cliff  or  a  halved  haystack,  with  one  gable 
crying  for  another  to  make  both  ends  meet,  it  was  as  a  whole 
picturesque  enough  with  all  that  charm  of  rough  wood,  which 
still  seems  to  keep  its  life-sap,  and  beside  which  your  marble  hall 
is  a  mere  petrifaction.  Weather-boarded  and  tarred,  it  faced 
you  with  a  black  beauty  of  its  own,  amid  which  its  diamond- 
paned  little  lattices  gleamed  like  an  Ethiopian's  eyes.  In  the 
foreground,  haystacks,  cornricks,  and  strawstacks  gave  grace  and 
colour,  fusing  with  the  spacious  landscape  as  naturally  as  the 
barns  and  byres  and  storehouses,  the  troughs  and  stables  and 
cart-sheds  and  the  mellow,  immemorial  dung. 

But  what  surprised  the  stranger  more  than  its  lop-sidedness  was 
the  duplication  of  its  front  door,  for  there  were  two  little  doors, 
with  twin  sills  and  latches.  It  had,  in  fact,  been  partitioned 
to  allow  a  couple  of  rooms  to  the  shepherd-cowman,  when  that 
lone  widower's  cottage  was  needed  for  an  extra  horseman. 
Master  Peartree's  new  home  became  known  as  Frog  Cottage. 
The  property  was  what  was  here  called  an  "  off-hand  farm,"  the 
owner  being  "  in  parts,"  or  engaged  in  other  enterprises,  and  for 
more  than  a  generation  Caleb  Flynt  had  lived  there  as  "  looker  " 
to  old  Farmer  Gale,  the  cute  Cornish  invader  who  had  discovered 
the  fatness  of  the  oozy  soil,  and  who  had  been  glad  to  install  a 
son  of  it  as  a  reconciling  link  between  Little  Bradmarsh  and 
"  the  furriner."  Caleb  belonged  to  that  almost  extinct  species 
of  managers  who  can  dispense  with  reading  and  writing,  and  his 
semi-absentee  employer  found  his  honesty  as  meticulous  as  his 
memory.  While  the  Flynt  nestlings  were  growing  up,  the 
parent  birds  had  found  the  nest  a  tight  fit,  but  with  the  gradual 
flight  of  the  brood  to  every  quarter  of  the  compass,  the  old  pair 
had  receded  into  its  snugger  recesses — living  mainly  by  the 
kitchen  fire  under  the  hanging  hams.  Thus  when  last  year 
Farmer  Gale's  son,  succeeding  to  the  property  and  foolishly 
desiring  a  more  scientific  and  literate  bailiff,  delicately  intimated 
that  having  bought  all  the  adjoining  land,  he  had  been  compelled 
to  acquire  therewith  the  rival  looker,  the  old  Flynts  were  glad 
enough  to  be  allowed  for  a  small  rent  the  life-use  of  the  farmhouse 


i6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

and  the  bits  of  waste  land  around  it,  subject  to  their  providing 
living  room  for  old  Master  Peartree,  who  was  to  pasture  his  flock 
of  sheep  and  a  few  kine  in  the  near  meadows.  Martha,  indeed, 
always  maintained  that  Caleb  had  made  a  bad  bargain  with  the 
new  master — did  not  the  whole  neighbourhood  pronounce  the 
young  widower  a  skinflint  ? — but  Caleb,  who  had  magisterially 
negotiated  with  the  new  bailiff  the  swapping  of  his  wood-ashes 
for  straw  for  her  pet  pig,  Maria,  limited  his  discussions  with  her 
to  theology.  "  When  one  talks  law  and  high  business,"  he 
maintained,  "  we  must  goo  back  to  the  days  afore  Eve  was  dug 
out  of  Adam." 

V 

Bundock,  restored  to  his  superiority  by  the  deprecatory 
expectancy  of  the  old  couple,  observed  graciously  that  there  was 
no  need  to  apologize  :  anybody  was  liable  to  have  a  letter. 
Indeed,  he  added  generously,  with  nine  boys  dotted  about  the 
world.  Frog  Farm  might  have  been  far  more  troublesome. 

"  Eleven,  Mr.  Bundock,"  corrected  Martha  with  a  quiver  in 
her  voice. 

"  I  don't  reckon  the  dead  and  buried,  Mrs.  Flynt.  They  don't 
write — not  even  to  the  dead-letter  office."  He  cut  short  a 
chuckle,  remembering  this  was  no  laughing  matter. 

"  And  the  other  nine  might  as  well  be  dead  for  all  the  letters 
you  bring  me,"  Martha  retorted  bitterly. 

"  No  news  is  good  news,  dear  heart,"  Caleb  put  in,  as  though 
to  shield  the  postman.  He  was  not  so  sure  now  that  this  vmfor- 
tunate  letter  had  not  disturbed  her  slowly  won  resignation. 
"We've  always  yeared  of  anything  unpleasant — like  when 
Daniel  married  the  Kaffir  lady." 
,   "  That  was  Christopher,"  said  Martha. 

"  Ow,  ay,  Christopher.  'Tis  a  wonder  he  could  take  to  a 
thick-lipped  lady.  Oi  couldn't  fancy  a  black-skinned  woman, 
even  if  she  was  the  Queen  of  Sheba.  Oi  shook  hands  with  one 
once,  though,  and  it  felt  soft.  They  rub  theirselves  with  oil  to 
keep  theirselves  lithe." 

Martha  replied  only  with  a  sigh.  The  Kaffir  lady,  for  all  her 
coloured  and  heathen  horror,  at  least  supplied  a  nucleus  for 
visualization,  whereas  all  her  other  stalwart  sons,  together  with 
one  married  daughter,  had  vanished  into  the  four  corners  of  the 
Empire — building  it  up  with  an  unconsciousness  mightier  than 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  17 

the  sword — and  only  the  children  who  had  died  young — two  girls 
and  a  boy — remained  securely  hers,  fixed  against  the  flux  of  life 
and  adventure.  Occasionally  indeed  an  indirect  rumour  of  her 
live  sons'  doings  came  to  her,  but  correspondence  was  not  the 
habit  of  those  days  when  even  amid  the  wealthier  classes  a  boy 
might  go  out  to  India  and  his  safe  arrival  remain  unknown  for  a 
semestrium  or  more.  The  foreign  postage,  too,  was  no  incon- 
siderable check  to  the  literary  impulse  or  encouragement  to  the 
lazy.  Indeed  postage  stamps  were  still  confined  to  half  a  dozen 
countries.  It  was  but  a  decade  since  they  had  come  in  at  all 
and  letters  with  envelopes  or  an  extra  sheet  had  ceased  to  be 
"  double  "  ;  postcards  were  still  unknown,  and  in  many  parts 
postmen  came  as  infrequently  as  carriers,  people  often  hastening  to 
scrawl  replies  which  the  same  men  might  convey  to  the  mail-bags. 

"  Kafiirs  ain't  black,"  corrected  Bundock.  "  They're  coffee- 
coloured.     That's  what  the  name  means." 

Martha  sighed  again.  So  far  had  her  brooding  fantasy  gone 
that  she  sometimes  pictured  baby  grandchildren  as  innocently 
dusky  as  the  hybrid  young  fantails  which  no  solicitude  could 
keep  out  of  her  dovecot,  and  which  were  a  reminder  that  heaven 
knew  no  colour-boundaries. 

"  Don't  be  nervous,"  Bundock  reassured  her.     "  I'll  find  it." 

"  Oh,  no  hurry,  no  hurry !  "  said  Caleb,  beginning  to  perspire 
distressingly  under  the  postman's  exertions  and  to  mop  his  hairy 
brow  with  his  brook-sopped  handkerchief.  How  these  youngsters 
grew  up  !  he  was  thinking.  Brats  one  had  seen  spanked  waxed 
into  mighty  officers  of  State.  "  Shall  I  brush  your  breeches, 
Posty  ?  "  he  inquired  tactlessly. 

"  What's  the  use  till  they're  dry  ?  "  snapped  Bundock. 

"  Come  in  and  dry  them  before  the  kitchen  fire,"  said  Martha. 

"  This  sun'll  dry  them,"  he  said  coldly. 

"  Not  so  sHck  as  the  fire,"  Caleb  blundered  on.  "  'Tain't  like 
you  was  a  serpent  walking  on  your  belly." 

Bundock  flushed  angrily  and  right-wheeled  to  hide  the  seat  of 
his  trousers.  "  Why  you  should  go  and  catch  your  letter  when 
the  roads  are  in  that  state !  "  he  muttered. 

"  You  could  ha'  waited  till  they  dried  !  "  Caleb  said  depre- 
catingly. 

"  I  did  wait  a  post-day  or  so,"  said  Bundock  with  undiminished 
resentment.  "  But  there's  such  a  thing,  uncle,  as  duty  to  my 
Queen.     Things  might  have  got  damper  instead  of  drier,  like  the 


i8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

time  the  floods  were  out  beyond  Long  Bradmarsh,  and  I  might 
have  had  to  swim  out  to  you." 

Caleb  was  impressed.     "  But  can  you  swim  ?  "  he  inquired. 

"  That's  not  the  point,"  growled  Bundock.  "  I  don't  say  I'd 
ha'  faced  the  elements  for  you,  but  if  somebody  with  real  traffic 
and  entanglement  were  living  here,  e.g.  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
I  should  have  come  through  fire  and  water." 

"  The  Dook  at  a  farm  !  "     Caleb  smiled  incredulously. 

"  In  the  Battle  of  Waterloo,"  said  Bundock  icily,  "  the  whole 
fight  was  whether  he  or  Boney  should  hold  a  farm." 

*'  You  don't  say  !  "  cried  Caleb  excitedly.   "  And  who  got  it  ?  " 

"  Well,  it  wasn't  Froggy's  Farm."  And  Bundock  roared  with 
glee  and  renewed  self-respect.  Caleb  guffawed  too,  but  merely 
for  elation  at  the  Frenchy's  defeat. 

The  calm  and  piping  voice  of  Martha  broke  in  upon  this 
robustious  duet,  pointing  out  that  there  was  no  Duke  in  residence 
and  no  need  for  natation,  but  that  since  Jinny  called  for  orders 
every  Friday  he  might  have  given  her  the  letter. 

"  Give  the  Queen's  mail  to  a  girl  !  "  Bundock  looked 
apoplectic. 

"  Jinny  never  loses  anything,"  said  Martha,  unimpressed. 

"  She'll  lose  her  character  if  she  ain't  careful,"  he  said  viciously  ; 
"  driving  of  a  Sunday  with  Farmer  Gale." 

"  That's  onny  to  chapel,"  said  Caleb. 

"  A  man  that  rich'U  never  take  her  there  !  "  sneered  Bundock. 

"  Why,  Jinny's  only  a  child,"  said  Martha,  roused  at  last.  "  And 
the  best  girl  breathing.  Look  how  she  slaves  for  her  grandfather !  " 

"  Jinny  !  Jinny  !  "  Bundock  muttered.  "  Nothing  but  Jinny 
all  the  day  and  all  the  way."  How  often  indeed  had  she  snatched 
the  gossip  from  his  mouth,  staled  his  earth-shaking  tidings,  even 
as  the  Bellman  anticipated  his  jokes !  "  Let  me  catch  her  carry- 
ing letters,  that's  all.  I'll  have  the  law  on  her,  child  or  no  child. 
I  expect  she  blows  that  horn  to  make  the  old  folks  think  she's 
got  postal  rights  !  "  He  did  not  mention  that  in  his  vendetta 
against  the  girl  it  was  he  who  never  hesitated  to  poach  on  the 
rival  preserves,  and  that  he  was  even  now  carrying  a  certain 
packet  of  tracts  which  he  had  found  at  "  The  Black  Sheep " 
awaiting  Jinny's  day,  and  which  he  had  bagged  on  the  ground 
that  he  had  a  letter  for  the  same  address. 

"  Jinny  would  have  saved  your  legs,"  said  Martha  dryly. 

Caleb  turned  on  her.     "  Ay,  and  his  leggings  too  !  "  he  burst 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  19 

forth  with  savage  sarcasm.  But  at  great  moments  deep  calls  to 
deep.  "  Women  don't  understand  a  man's  duty.  And  Posty's 
every  inch  a  man." 

Bundock  tried  to  look  his  full  manhood  :  fortunately  the  dis- 
covery of  the  letter  at  this  instant  enabled  him  to  gain  an  inch 
or  two  by  throwing  back  his  shoulders,  so  long  bent  under  the 
royal  yoke. 

"  Mrs.  Flynt,"  he  announced  majestically. 

"  For  me  ?  "  gasped  Martha. 

"  For  you,"  said  Bundock  implacably.  "  Mrs.  Flynt,  Frog 
Farm,  Swash.  End,  Little  Bradm.arsh,  near  Chipstone,  Essex.  Not 
that  I  hold  it's  proper  to  write  to  a  man's  wife  wMe  he's  alive 
— but  my  feelings  don't  count."     And  he  tendered  her  the  letter. 

"  It  does  seem  more  becoming  for  Flynt  to  have  his  Cousin 
Caroline's  letter,"  admitted  Martha,  shrinking  back  meekly. 

Bundock  relaxed  in  beams.  "  I'm  wonderfully  pleased  with 
you,  Mrs.  Flynt,"  he  said,  handing  Caleb  the  letter.  "  You're  a 
shining  example,  for  aU  you  stand  up  for  that  chit.  When  I 
think  of  Deacon  Mawhood's  wife  and  how  she  defies  him  with 
that  bonnet  of  hers !  " 

"  What  sort  of  bonnet  ?  "  said  Martha,  pricking  up  her  ears. 

''  You  haven't  heard  ?  "  Bundock's  satisfaction  increased. 
'^  It's  like  the  Queen's — drat  her  !  I  mean,  drat  Mrs.  Mawhood 
— made  with  that  new  plait — '  Brilliant's  '  the  name.  They  turn 
the  border  of  one  edge  of  the  straw  inwards  and  that  makes  it 
all  splendiferous." 

"  Pomps  and  wanities,"  groaned  Caleb.  "  And  she  a  deacon's 
wife  !  " 

Bundock  sniggered.  His  sympathy  with  the  husband  was 
deeper  and  older  than  theology. 

"  I  told  you,"  Martha  reminded  Caleb,  "  what  would  come  of 
'electing  a  ratcatcher  a  deacon." 

"  A  righteous  ratcatcher,"  maintained  Caleb  sturdily,  "  be 
higher  than  a  hungodly  emperor." 

"  You  haven't  got  any  emperors,"  said  the  practical  Martha. 

"  And  how  many  kings  have  joined  your  Ecclesia  ?  "  put  in 
Bundock. 

"  All  the  kings  of  righteousness  !  "  answered  Martha  in  trumpet- 
tones. 

Bundock  was  quelled.  "  Well,  I  can't  stop  gammicking,"  he 
said,  shouldering  his  bag. 


20  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Won't  you  have  a  glass  of  pagles  wine  ?  ''  said  Martha, 
relapsing  to  earth. 

"  No,  thank  you.  I've  got  a  letter  for  Frog  Cottage 
too  !  " 

"  For  Master  Peartree  !  "  cried  Martha.  "  And  all  in  one 
morning.     Well,  if  that's  not  a  miracle  !  " 

"  You  and  your  miracles  !  "  he  said  with  a  Tom  Paine  brutality. 
"  Why  I  saved  up  yours  till  another  came  for  Swash  End.     And 

so  I've  managed  to  kill "     His  face  suddenly  changed.     The 

brutal  look  turned  beatific.     But  his  sentence  was  frozen.     The 
good  couple  regarded  him  dubiously. 

"  What's  amiss  ?  "  cried  Martha. 

Bundock  gasped  for  expression  like  a  salmon  on  a  slab.  "  To 
kill "  burst  from  his  lips  again,  but  the  rest  was  choked  in  a 
spasm  of  cachinnation. 

"  You'll  kiU  yourself  laughin',"  said  Caleb. 

Bundock  mastered  himself  with  a  mighty  effort.  "  So  as  to 
kill — ha,  ha,  ha  ! — to  kill — ha,  ha,  ha  ! — two  frogs — ha,  ha,  ha  ! — 
with  one  stone  !  " 

Martha  corrected  him  coldly:  "  Two  birds,  you  mean." 

"  Ay,"  corroborated  Caleb,  "  the  proverb  be  two  birds." 

"  But  here,"  Bundock  explained  between  two  convulsions, 
"it's  two  frogs.'' 

Caleb  shook  his  head.  "  Oi've  lived  here  or  by  the  saltings 
afore  you  was  born,  and  brought  up  a  mort  o'  childer  here.  Two 
birds,  sonny,  two  birds." 

Bundock's  closing  chuckles  died  into  ineffable  contempt. 

"  Good  morning,"  he  said  firmly. 

"  You're  sure  you.  won't  have  a  sip  o'  pagles  wine  ?  "  repeated 
Martha. 

He  shook  his  head  sternly.  "  If  I  had  time  for  drinking  I'd 
have  time  to  tell  you  all  the  news."  He  turned  on  his  heel, 
presenting  the  post-bag  at  them  like  a  symbol  of  duty. 

"  Anything  fresh  ?  "  murmured  Martha. 

Bundock  veered  round  viciously.  "  D'you  suppose  all  Brad- 
marsh  is  as  sleepy  as  the  Froggeries  ?  Fresh  ?  Why,  there's 
things  as  fresh  as  the  thatch  on  Farmer  Gale's  barn  or  the  paint 
on  Elijah  Skindle's  new  dog-hospital  or  the  black  band  on  the 
chimney-sweep's  Sunday  hat." 

"  Is  Mrs.  Whitefoot  dead  ? "  inquired  Martha  anxiously. 

"  No,  'twas  only  his  mother-in-law  in  London,  and  when  he 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  2r 

went  up  to  the  funeral  he  had  his  pocket  picked.  Quite  spoilt 
his  day,  I  reckon — ^ha,  ha,  ha  !  " 

"  Buryin'  ain't  a  laughin'  matter,"  rebuked  Caleb  stolidly. 

"  It  depends  who's  buried,"  said  Bundock.  "  I  shouldn't  cry 
over  Mrs.  Mawhood.  Which  reminds  me  that  the  Deacon  sent 
out  the  Bellman  to  say  he  couldn't  be  responsible  for  her  debts." 

"  Good  !  "  cried  Caleb.     Martha  paled,  but  was  silent. 

"  Only  the  Bellman  spoilt  it  as  usual  with  his  silly  old  jokes. 
Proclaimed  that  the  Deacon  had  put  his  foot  down  on  his  wife's 
bonnet." 

"  He,  he,  he  !  "  laughed  the  old  couple. 

Bundock  turned  a  hopeless  hump.     "  Good  niorning  !  " 

"  And  thank  you  kindly  for  the  letter,"  called  Martha. 

"  Don't  mention  it,"  said  Bundock.  "  And  besides  I  killed — 
ho,  ho,  ho  ! — two  frogs  !  " 

They  heard  his  explosions  on  the  quiet  air  long  after  he  and 
his  royal  hump  had  vanished  along  the  Bradmarsh  road. 


VI 

Caleb's  eyes  followed  the  heaving  mail-bag. 

"  Bundock's  buoy-oy  fares  to  be  jolly  this  mornin'." 

"  He  does  be  lively  sometimes,"  agreed  Martha. 

Suddenly  Caleb  became  aware  of  the  letter  in  his  hand. 

"  Dash  my  buttons,  Martha  !  We  disremembered  to  ask  him 
to  read  it."  '  W^ 

It  can  no  longer  be  concealed  that  despite  her  erudition 
Martha  could  not  read  writing  nor  write  save  by  imitating 
print.     The  cursive  alphabet  was  Phoenician  to  her.  ^ 

"  I  didn't  forget,"  she  answered  with  her  masterly  calm. 
"  Bundock's  too  leaky.  You  heard  him  tell  all  the  gossip  and 
scandal.  And  it  ain't  true  about  Jinny,  for  Master  Peartree  saw 
them  riding  in  the  other  Sunday  and  Farmer  Gale's  little  boy 
sat  between  them.  Besides,  Bundock's  a  man,  and  I  don't  want 
a  man  to  read  my  letter  from  Caroline."  ^ 

The  point  seemed  arguable,  but  Caleb  meekly  suggested 
the  little  boy  she  had  just  mentioned — only  a  mile  and  a  half 
away.     He  would  be  at  school,  Martha  pointed  out. 

Caleb  looked  at  the  letter  as  a  knifeless  cook  at  an  oyster. 

"  What's  the  clock-time  ?  "  he  asked. 
Not  quite  certain.     I  set  the  clock  by  Jinny  last  Friday,  but 


(C 


22  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

it  stopped  suddenly  yesterday,  when  I  was  reading  you  St.  Paul's 
Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.     Haven't  you  heard  it  not  striking  ?  " 

Caleb  shook  his  head. 

"  Afeared  Oi'm  gooin'  deafish,  dear  heart.  But  we'll  know 
the  clock-time  on  Friday,"  he  added  philosophically.  "  And 
when  Jinny  comes  she  can  read  the  letter  likewise." 

But  Martha  was  blushing.  "  No,  no,  not  Jinny  1  She's  a 
young  girl." 

"  Thank  the  Lord  for  her  lively  face  !  "  agreed  Caleb. 

"  Maybe  she  oughtn't  'to  read  a  letter  to  a  married  woman," 
explained  Martha  shyly,  "  being  a  girl  without  mother  or  sisters, 
brought  up  by  her  grandfather." 

"  But  Cousin  Caroline  wouldn't  write  naught  improper." 

"  Of  course  not — but  it  mightn't  be  proper  for  an  orphan  girl 
to  read.  Maybe  it's  not  even  proper  for  you,  and  that's  why  she 
addressed  it  to  me." 

Caleb  felt  as  bemused  as  before  a  Bundock  witticism. 

"  Joulterhead  !  "  said  Martha,  with  a  loving  smile.  "  And 
you've  had  fourteen  !  " 

The  letter  fell  from  his  nerveless  fingers.  "  Cousin  Caroline 
confined  again  !  "  And  the  clacking  of  all  those  innumerable 
infants  filled  the  air — like  the  barking  of  the  black  geese  on  the 
wintry  mud-flats.  But  he  recovered  himself.  "  Why,  she's  a 
widow,  not  a  pair." 

"  Widows  can  be  re-paired,"  said  Martha. 

"  Must  have  been  a  middlin'  bold  man  to  goo  courtin'  a  family 
that  size,"  Caleb  reflected. 

He  picked  up  the  letter  and  poised  it  in  his  hand. 

"  Don't  feel  as  weighty  as  St.  Paul's  letters,"  he  said. 

"  The  text  doesn't  mean  his  letters  were  heavy,"  explained 
Martha.  " '  His  letters,  say  they,  are  weighty  and  powerful ' — 
that's  what  I  was  reading  you  when  the  clock  stopped.  Any 
fool  can  write  a  heavy  letter — ^he's  only  got  to  write  on  a  slate." 

"  That's  a  true  word,"  said  Caleb,  admiring  her. 

"  Whereas,"  pursued  Martha,  "  the  whole  Bible  has  been  got 
inside  a  nutshell." 

"  Lord  !  "  said  Caleb.     "  I  suppose  it  was  a  cokernut !  " 

"  Not  at  all.     Only  a  walnut." 

"  Fancy  !     But  was  there  walnuts  in  the  Holy  Land  ?  " 

"  I  didn't  say  'twas  done  in  Palestine." 

"  Then  there  wasn't  walnuts  there  ?  "     His  face  fell. 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  23 

"  I  don't,  remember — oh,  yes — Solomon  asked  his  love  to  come 
into  the  garden  of  nuts." 

"  But  it  don't  say  walnuts  ?  "  he  inquired  wistfully. 

"  I  can't  say  it  does." 

"  Then  maybe  there  won't  be  pickled  walnuts  in  the  New 
Jerusalem  ?  " 

"  Not  all  the  righteous  have  your  carnal  appetite,"  said  Martha 
severely. 

"  You  just  said  Solomon's  sweetheart  liked  nuts,"  said  Caleb 
stoutly.  "  And  dedn't  the  Holy  Land  flow  with  milk  and 
honey  ?  "  He  had  a  vision  of  it,  seamed  and  riddled  like  his 
native  mud-flat,  but  with  lacteal  creeks  and  mellifluous  pools, 

"  You  put  me  out  so,"  snapped  Bundock,  suddenly  reappearing 
before  the  engrossed  couple,  "  that  I  forgot  to  kill  my  two  frogs 
after  all !  "  And  going  to  the  Frog  Cottage  doorway,  he  knocked 
officially  before  opening  it  and  committing  the  letter  to  the 
empty  interior. 

"  You'll  be  witness  that  I  delivered  it  constitutionallv,"  he 
said,  "  for  I  can't  be  expected  to  come  a  third  time." 

"  'Tis  a  windfall  your  coming  a  second,"  cried  Caleb  eagerly, 
"  bein'  as  we  can't  read  the  letter." 

Martha  miade  facial  contortions  to  remind  him  that  Bundock 
was  barred.  "  'Tain't  you  we  want  to  read  it,"  he  hurriedly 
added,  "  but  when  a  letter  comes  all  of  an  onplunge,  time  a  man's 
peacefully  trimmin'  the  werges,  he  ain't  prepared  like.  You 
haven't  got  a  moment — did,  Oi'd  be  glad  o'  your  counsel  on  the 
matter." 

"  Well,  since  I've  wasted  so  much  of  the  Queen's  time !  " 

said  Bundock,  flattered. 

They  adjourned  to  the  parlour  to  give  him  a  rest,  and  denuding 
himself  of  both  cap  and  bag  of  office,  he  occupied  oracularly  the 
long-unused  arm-chair,  while  Caleb,  uncomfortably  perched  on  a 
seat  of  slippery  horsehair,  started  to  unfold  the  situation. 

"Take  off  your  hat,"  broke  in. Martha.  "Mr.  Bundock  will 
be  thinking  you've  no  manners." 

"  Oi'll  be  soon  gooin'  outside  again,"  said  Caleb  obstinately, 
and  re-started  his  story. 

"  Do  let  me  explain,"  interrupted  Martha  at  last. 

"  Do  let  me  get  a  word  in,"  cried  Caleb. 

"  Well,  take  off  your  hat." 

"  Oi'll  be  gooin'  outside  soon,  Oi  tell  ye." 


24  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Then  you  can  put  it  on  again." 

"  Oi  shall  never  make  Bundock  sensible,  ef  you  keep  inter- 
ruptin'  me." 

"  You  see,  Mr.  Bundock,  it's  this  way "  began  Martha. 

"  Oi've  told  him  all  that,"  said  Caleb.     "  Let  me  speak." 

"  Well,  take  off  your  hat,"  said  Martha. 

"  Oi'll  be  gooin'  outside  agen,  won't  Oi  ?  " 

Bundock  was  examining  the  letter  which  had  been  laid  on  the 
table  as  for  an  operation. 

"  But  it  don't  look  like  a  woman's  writing,"  he  interrupted. 
"  That  would  be  spidery." 

"  'Tain't  likely  she  could  write  herself  in  that  condition,"  began 
Caleb,  but  Martha's  face  again  hushed  him  down. 

"  There's  neither  seal  nor  sticking  envelope,"  pursued  the 
expert.     "  Nothing  but  a  wafer.     Comes  from  a  poor  man." 

"  Her  new  husband,"  said  Caleb,  and  set  Martha  grimacing 
again. 

"  Oi'll  be  soon  gooin'  outside,"  he  protested,  misunderstanding. 

"  What  you  want,"  summed  up  Bundock  judicially,  "  is  a 
mixture  of  discretion  with  matrimony,  seasoned  with  a  sprinkle 
of  learning." 

"  He  talks  like  the  Book  !  "  said  Caleb  admiringly. 

"But  where  is  this  mixture  ?  "  inquired  Martha  eagerly. 

"  She  don't  exist,"  said  Bundock.  "  But  Miss  Gentry  is  the 
nearest  lady  that  can  read,  and  Fate  is  just  sending  me  with  a 
letter  and  a  packet  to  her." 

The  couple  looked  doubtful. 

**  She  ain't  matrimony,"  said  Caleb. 

"  No,"  admitted  Bundock,  "  but  I  guess  she's  old  enough  to 
be,  though  I  haven't  seen  her  census  paper — he,  he  !  And  be- 
sides she's  a  dressmaker  !  " 

"  What's  that  to  do  with  it  ?  "  asked  Caleb. 

"  I  see  your  missus  understands,"  said  Bundock  mysteriously. 

"  But  she  won't  walk  five  miles  to  read  my  letter,"  urged 
the  blushing  Martha. 

Caleb  had  one  of  the  great  inspirations  of  his  life. 

"  And  ain't  it  time  you  got  a  new  gownd  ?  " 

Martha  flushed  up.  "  Oh,  Caleb !  Don't  let  us  run  to 
vanity !  " 

"  Wanity,  mother !  It  ain't  tinkling  ornaments  nor  cauls  nor 
nose-jewels,"  protested  Caleb,  with  a  vague  reminiscence  of  her 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  25 

Biblical  readings.     "  And  ye've  had  naught  since  the  sucking- 
pig  Oi  bought  ye  for  your  sixtieth  birthday." 
But  Martha  shook  her  head,  quoting  firmly  : 

"  Let  me  he  dressed  fine  as  I  will, 
Birds,  flowers,  and  worms  exceed  me  stillP 

"  Then  why  not  a  bonnet  ?  "  suggested  Bundock.  "  That 
would  be  cheaper  than  a  gown." 

"  xA.y,  a  bonnet !  "  agreed  Caleb,  though  he  sounded  it  a 
"  boarnt." 

Martha  flashed  a  resentful  glance  which,  however,  Bundock 
took  for  but  another  thrust  at  Caleb's  obstinate  hat. 

"  I  don't  want  a  new  bonnet,"  she  cried  indignantly. 

"  It  needn't  be  new,"  said  Bundock  helpfully.  "  Just  have 
your  old  bonnet  whitened.     That's  on  her  bill-paper  : 

'  Bonnets  Bleached  As  Good  As  New.'  " 

"  That's  a  good  notion,"  said  Caleb.  "  You  don't  want  it 
bran-span-new.  Posty'll  tell  her  to  come  over  here  to  get  your 
old  boarnt  and  then  we'll  spring  Cousin  Caroline's  letter  on 
her  for  her  to  read  !  "  He  chuckled.  Bundock  chuckled  too, 
swelling  at  the  adoption  of  his  advice. 

"  And  now  that  I've  stopped  gammicking  so  long,  I  may  as  well 
sample  that  cowslip  wine,  Mrs.  Flynt,"  he  observed  graciously. 

But  Martha  had  vanished. 


VII 

Miss  Gentry  had  apartments  in  one  of  the  most  elegant 
cottages  to  be  found  in  Little  Bradmarsh.  Protected  by  palings, 
it  stood  all  alone  on  the  high  road,  painted  a  vivid  green,  with 
three  pollarded  lime-trees  in  front  like  sentinel  mops.  At  the 
base  of  the  trim  little  garden  the  front  door  rose  above  two 
wooden  steps  with  a  little  porch  and  ostentated  a  brass  plate 
with  the  inscription  : 

Miss  Gentry 

Late  of  Colchester 

Practical  Dressmaker  and  Milliner. 

In  proof  of  which,^from  the  cottage  window,  whose  green  shutters 
lay  folded  back,  a  visile  or  jacket  of  black  silk,  and  a  polka 
jacket,  and  a  trio  of  straw  bonnets,  Tuscan  or  Leghorn,  appealed 


26  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

to  the  passing  eye  :  one  of  them  a  bonnet  cap  with  a  quilting  of 
net  and  broad  blue  strings,  another  resplendent  with  purple 
ribbons  and  the  new-treated  straw  plait  that  the  Queen  and 
Mrs.  Mawhood  favoured,  and  the  third  of  drawn  silk  on  little 
w^ires.  The  pictures  of  the  period  with  a  wonderful  unanimity 
and  monotony  display  a  single  style  of  bonnet,  but  artists  in 
those  days  were  men,  and  Miss  Gentry  could  have  told  you 
better.  "  I've  looked  down  from  a  pew  in  the  gallery  of  my  Col- 
chester Church  on  Easter  Sunday,"  she  told  Jinny  once,  "  and 
tried  in  vain  to  find  two  fellow-bonnets." 

But  her  professional  door  with  its  immaculate  paint  and  shining 
brass  was  so  forbiddingly  respectable  that  clients  mostly  pre- 
ferred to  seek  access  through  her  landlady's  back  door,  where  the 
flutter  of  washing  from  the  clothes-line  on  its  green  square  poles 
in  the  little  orchard  was  reassuring;  not  to  mention  her  chickens. 

"  Practical  "  was  the  unfailing  adjective  in  those  parts.  Miss 
Gentry  was  not  undeserving  of  it,  for  her  dresses  were  cheap 
without  being  vulgar,  while  her  knack  of  whitening  the  straw 
enabled  the  poorest,  in  the  succession  of  new  bonnets,  to  keep 
pace  with  Victoria  on  the  throne.  A  stranger  might  have 
thought  another  species  of  dressmaker  existed,  w^hose  confections, 
though  exquisite,  would  never  fit,  or  who  designed,  but  could  not 
execute  ;  whereas  the  only  other  person  for  miles  round  at  all 
in  the  sartorial  line  was  an  equally  "  Practical  Breeches-Maker," 
placarding  from  a  flower-potted  cottage  window  his  "  Strong, 
Stylish  Pantaloons."  But  the  thought  of  unipisictical  pantaloons 
— say,  without  buttons  or  belts — or  of  theoretical  trousers,  was 
simple  compared  with  the  image  evoked  by  Mr.  Henry  White- 
foot's  door-plate,  proclaiming  that  victim  of  the  London  pick- 
pocket a  "  Practical  Chimney-Sweep  "  :  as  by  contrast  with 
some  exquisite  dream  Ethiopian,  only  platonically  black,  darkly 
revolving  flues  and  fireplaces,  sweeping  shadow-chimneys  with 
fleckless  brushes,  and  carrying  off  ideal  bags  of  the  soot  that 
never  was  on  sea  or  land. 

But  perhaps  in  Miss  Gentry's  case  the  word  "  Practical  "  was 
necessary  to  offset  the  business-damage  of  the  tradition  that  had 
followed  her  from  her  native  Colchester.  For  Miss  Gentry  had 
had  a  "  revelation."  It  had  occurred  in  her  girlhood,  but  the 
halo  of  it  still  circled  round  her  chignon.  Seated  in  church,  full 
of  worldly  thoughts — possibly  studying  the  infinite  variety  of 
bonnets — she  had  seen  the  stained-glass  angel  move.     What  this 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  27 

flutter  of  wing  and  lifting  of  leg  "  revealed  "  had  never  been 
clear  :  unless — as  a  wag  maintained — it  portended  the  flight  of 
Miss  Gentry  herself.  That  hegira  of  hers  from  Colchester  to 
Bradmarsh  had  not,  alas,  increased  her  prophetic  prestige  :  what 
right  has  a  "  furriner  "  to  come  with  "  revelations  "  ?  Even  her 
fellow-Churchfolk — she  was  one  of  the  few  Bradmarshians  that 
clung  to  the  Establishment — looked  askance  on  the  miracle, 
feeling  it  indeed  as  reprehensibly  Papish,  and  as  lending  colour  to 
the  suspicion  that  she  was  a  "  French  "  dressmaker  :  a  suspicion 
strengthened  at  once  by  her  elegant  handiwork,  and  by  her  full- 
bosomed  plenitude,  swarthy  complexion,  and  more  than  em- 
bryonic moustache.  It  was  forgotten  that  if  these  did  imply 
Gallic  blood,  it  would  have  been,  not  the  Papish,  but  that  Hugue- 
not strain  whose  inpour  into  the  county  had  at  one  time  carried 
the  French  liturgy  into  Essex  churches.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
Miss  Gentry  was  so  fanatical  a  Church  woman  that  she  supple- 
mented all  her  bills  and  receipts  by  tracts  in  defence  of  the 
Establishment,  purchased  at  her  own  expense  from  a  mysterious 
reservoir  in  Colchester.  Nevertheless,  such  is  the  contrariety  of 
mankind,  the  large  accession  she  represented  to  the  parish 
church — ^where  on  wet  Sundays  only  the  Apostle's  two  or  three 
were  gathered  together — was  discounted  by  her  felt  queerness. 

i\nd  it  was,  still  more  oddly,  from  the  Peculiars  that  she 
received  the  bulk  of  her  custom,  and  this  despite  her  top- 
lofty airs  towards  them,  and  the  tracts  suggesting  that  souls,  no 
less  than  bonnets,  could  be  bleached  as  good  as  new.  Possibly 
their  more  elastic  spirituality  vibrated  more  readily  to  the 
moving  angel :  perhaps  the  real  bond  of  sympathy  was  that  they 
knew  her  unpopular  with  the  Church  :  like  themselves  a  butt  of 
legend,  and  lacking  even  their  advantage  of  Bradmarsh  birth. 

But  even  the  Churchwomen  did  nof  utterly  deny  patronage 
to  this  talented  needlewoman,  nor  refuse  her  the  deference  due 
to  weekday  gloves,  a  parasol,  and  bills  with  printed  headlines  ; 
they  did  not  even  discountenance  her  crusade  against  Dissent, 
though  her  copious  allusions  to  Providence  "  moving  in  a 
mysterious  way "  were  felt  to  be  too  broadly  autobiographic. 
Moreover,  in  view  of  the  caustic  remarks  upon  cardinals, 
Puseyites,  black-robed  priests,  and  winking  pictures,  by  which 
her  tracts  began  to  diversify  the  attack  upon  Dissent — for  John 
Bull  was  getting  alarmed  at  the  new  Roman  invasion — it  was  a 
source  of  surprise  that  she  failed  to  see  the  beam  in  her  own 


28  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

eye.  For  if  Virgins  could  not  wink  in  Rimini,  why  should 
Angels  wobble  in  Colchester  ?  To  add  to  her  oddity,  her  brain 
was  full  of  ancient  maggots  of  astrology  and  medicine,  crept  in 
from  "  Culpeper's  Herbal,"  her  one  bedside  book. 

That  Bundock  should  be  bringing  a  bonnet  commission  to  this 
excellent  and  industrious,  if  freakish  female,  was  the  more  laud- 
able, inasmuch  as  he  nourished  a  prejudice  against  her  and  her 
tracts.  Not  that  he  held  with  Catholic  or  evangelical  Dissenters 
any  more  than  with  the  Church  proper.  As  a  follower  of  Tom 
Paine,  whose  "  Age  of  Reason  "  he  read  piously  in  bed  every  Sun- 
day morning — the  passage  asserting  that  to  make  a  true  miracle 
Jonah  should  have  swallowed  the  whale  was  a  regular  Lesson — 
he  regarded  himself  as  a  great  free  spirit  in  an  illiterate  and 
priest-ridden  world,  one  whose  God  was  everywhere  except  in 
Church.  Not  that  he  could  follow  the  Master's  excursions  into 
trigonometry  or  astronomy  or  knew  anything  of  his  idol's 
"  Rights  of  Man,"  being  indeed  singularly  free  from  the  con- 
temporary unrest  of  the  industrial  townsman,  and  combining, 
like  greater  men,  a  crusty  conservatism  for  the  old  order  with  a 
radical  rejection  of  its  spinal  creed.  Possibly  his  devotion  to 
the  still  youthful  Queen  was  part  of  his  softness  for  the  sex,  for 
the  only  part  of  "  The  Age  of  Reason  "  that  left  him  unconvinced 
was  its  impugnment  of  the  wisdom  of  Solomon,  its  contention 
that  "  seven  hundred  wives  and  three  hundred  concubines  are 
worse  than  none."  But  it  was  not  Tom  Paine,  nor  even  Bob 
Taylor's  "  The  Devil's  Chaplain,"  it  was  the  long  years  of  his 
father's  paralysis  that  had  first  sapped  his  faith  in  the  pharma- 
copceian  aspects  of  prayer,  though  he  considerately  concealed 
his  defection  from  his  bed-ridden  parent,  and  even  the  visiting 
elders  withheld  the  racking  information.  The  old  Bundock  was 
not,  however,  to  be  deceived,  on  this  point  at  least. 

"  My  son  is  moral,  only  moral,"  he  would  say,  with  a  sigh. 

To  such  a  temperament  Miss  Gentry  must  needs  be  anti- 
pathetic, and  to  mark  his  distaste,  Bundock  was  wont  to  leave 
the  Colchester  packets  of  tracts  as  well  as  the  "  practical " 
correspondence  at  the  side  door,  shedding  the  light  of  his  coun- 
tenance only  on  the  landlady.  But  on  this  occasion,  having  a 
message  to  deliver  as  well  as  a  missive  and  a  packet,  he  performed 
resoundingly  on  the  green  knocker,  and  Miss  Gentry  herself, 
attended  by  Squibs,  her  ebony  cat,  appeared  in  the  narrow,  little 
passage,  frenziedly  stitching  at  a  feminine  fabric.     Behind  her. 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  29 

through  the  open  back  door,  was  a  gleam  of  blossoming  orchard 
and  dangling  chemises. 

"  Good  morning,  Bundock,"  she  said  graciously ;  "  lovely 
weather." 

"  It's  all  right  overhead,"  he  grumbled,  "  but  underfoot, 
especially  at  Frog  Farm — whew  !  " 

"  You  had  to  go  to  Frog  Farm  ?  "  she  inquired  sympathetically. 

"  Yes,  but  there  was  a  letter  for  Frog  Cottage  too.  So  I — 
he,  he  ! — I  killed  two  frogs  with  one  stone." 

"  Two  birds,  you  mean,"  said  Miss  Gentry,  embosoming  her 
letter  with  a  romantic  air  and  laying  her  packet  on  a  chair. 
She  added  in  alarm  :    "  Would  you  like  a  glass  of  water  ?  " 

"  I  don't  need  drink,"  said  Bundock,  mastering  the  apoplectic 
assault,  "  it's  other  folks  that  need  brains." 

"  My,  were  the  old  Flynts  unusually  trying  ?  "  she  asked 
sympathetically. 

"  They  want  you  to  clean  the  gammer's  bonnet,"  he  answered 
brusquely. 

"  That's  not  so  foolish."  Her  needle  was  moving  busily  again. 
"  Have  you  brought  it  ?  " 

''  No." 

"  That  does  seem  foolish." 

"  I'm  not  a  bonnet-bearer  !     They  want  you  to  fetch  it." 

"  Me  !  Five  miles  to  clean  a  bonnet !  When  I'm  so  busy  ! 
And  in  all  that  mud  !  " 

"  It  ain't  so  muddy  this  side  o'  Swash  End,  and  it's  not  two 
miles  each  way  by  the  fields." 

"  Yes,  with  horrid  cows  !  " 

Bundock  felt  protective.     "  Cows  ain't  bulls." 

"  Well,  I  won't  go.     You  tell  Mrs.  Flynt  she  must  come  to  me." 

"  How  can  I  tell  her  ?  I  shan't  likely  be  going  that  way  for 
months,  thank  my  stars."  Miss  Gentry  quivered  a  little  at  the 
expression,  wondering  under  what  planet  he  was  born. 

"  Well,  I'll  write  to  her,"  she  said  conclusively. 

"  What !  And  me  take  the  letter  !  "  In  his  indignation  he 
almost  blurted  out  that  the  same  difficulty  of  reading  it  would 
arise. 

"  Then  I'll  tell  Jinny  to  bring  the  bonnet !  " 

Bundock  felt  baffled.  Instead  of  cunningly  helping  the  Flynts 
to  get  their  letter  read,  he  had  only  secured  that  minx  of  a 
carrier  a  commission.     He  scowled  at  the  dressmaker,  seeing  her 


30  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

moustache  as  big  as  a  guardsman's  and  believing  the  worst  of 
the  legends  about  it  :  even  that  the  real  reason  she  left  Colchester 
was  that  the  bristly-bearded  oysterman  to  whom  she  was  engaged 
had  refused  to  shave  unless  she  did.  "  I'll  be  wishing  you  a 
good  morning,"  he  said  icily,  hitching  up  his  bag. 

''  Good  morning,"  said  Miss  Gentry.  But  she  omitted  to  slam 
the  door  in  his  face  as  he  expected,  indeed  she  had  gradually 
advanced  into  the  porch,  stitching  unrelaxingly.  And  Bundock 
now  became  acutely  aware  that  he  could  not  turn  his  back  on 
her  without  revealing  the  stain  on  Her  Majesty's  uniform,  that 
even  by  lowering  the  mail-bag  he  had  just  hitched  up,  he  could 
not  cover  up  what  certain  rude  ploughboys  had  already  com- 
mented on.  He  understood  it  was  green.  In  this  dreadful 
situation  he  began  backing  slowly  as  from  the  presence  of 
royalty,  making  desperate  conversation  to  cover  his  retreat. 

"  I  did  give  you  your  tracts,  didn't  I  ?  "  he  babbled. 

"  If  you  mean  the  packet,"  said  Miss  Gentry  in  stern  rebuke, 
"  there  it  lies.     /  haven't  opened  it  !  " 

"  Do  you  mean  that  /  have  ?  "  he  asked  indignantly,  gaining 
another  yard  in  this  rear-guard  action.  "  We  don't  have  to  open 
an  oyster  to  know  what's  inside." 

Miss  Gentry's  brow  grew  as  swarthy  as  her  moustache — at  the 
reminder  of  her  lost  oysterman,  Bundock  supposed  in  dismay. 

"  Don't  you  always  send  out  tracts  after  I  bring  you  packets  ?  " 
he  explained  hastily,  stiU  retreating  with  his  face  to  the  foe. 

"  Not  when  they're  patterns,"  said  Miss  Gentry  crushingly. 
"  And  how  do  you  know  it's  not  7 he  Englishzvoma^i' s  Magazine  ?  " 

She  turned  back  into  the  passage,  and  he  hoped  she  would 
slam  the  door  on  her  triumph,  but  she  took  up  the  packet  instead. 
"  We  shall  soon  see,"  and  snipping  the  string  with  mysteriously 
produced  scissors,  she  read  out  unctuously :  "  Ishmael  and  the 
Wilderness." 

Bundock  did  not  know  which  way  to  turn.  Why  in  the  name 
of  propriety  did  she  not  go  back  to  her  workroom  and  close  her 
door  ?  Miss  Gentry,  without  the  clue  to  his  lingering  attitude, 
observed  invitingly,  tapping  the  packet :  "  If  this  won't  make 
you  see  the  beauties  of  the  Establishment,  nothing  will." 

He  grinned  uncomfortably.  "  Always  willing  to  see  the 
beauties  of  any  establishment." 

It  was  very  strange.  Give  him  a  female,  even  with  a  mous- 
tache, even  tepefied  by  tracts,  and  something  from  the  deeps 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  31 

rose  up  to  philander.  Not  that  there  wanted  a  lurid  fascination 
in  this  exotic  and  literate  lady  :  his  very  loathing  was  a  tribute 
to  a  vivid  personality. 

Miss  Gentry,  however,  was  shocked.  She  put  down  the  tracts. 
She  knew  herself  "  born  under  Venus,"  but  romance  and  respect- 
ability were  never  disjoined  in  her  day-dreams,  and  as  the 
channel  of  a  revelation  she  felt  profaned.  "'Don't  talk  like 
that,"  she  said  sharply.     "  You're  a  married  man." 

"  'Tis  a  married  man  knows  how  to  appreciate  beauty,"  he 
replied,  receding  farther  nevertheless  as  in  ironic  commentary. 

"  For  shame  !  "  Her  needle  stabbed  on.  "  And  you  setting 
up  to  be  holy  !  " 

"  Me  ?  "  Surprise  brought  his  strategic  retreat  to  a  standstill. 
"  I  never  set  up  to  be  a  stained-glass  saint." 

Again  he  had  blundered.  The  black  eyes  flashed  fire.  "  You 
who  move  mountains  !  "  she  cried  angrily. 

"  Me  move  mountains  ?  "     Bundock  was  bewildered. 

"  A  little  grain  of  mustard-seed,"  he  heard  her  saying  more 
tremulously.  "  And  if  a  sycamine-tree  could  move —  !  Surely 
you  don't  hold  with  the  unbelievers  !  " 

It  was  precisely  whom  Bundock  did  hold  with,  but  the  big 
black  eyes  seemed  suddenly  tearful  and  appealing,  her  needle 
seemed  entering  his  breast,  and  she  swam  before  him  as  a  fine, 
voluptuous  female.  Through  the  passage  he  saw  the  apple-trees 
in  bridal  bloom  and  the  white  feminine  w^ashing,  and  the  Master's 
remark  on  the  apparent  miracle  of  the  extraction  of  electric 
flashes  from  the  human  body  thrilled  in  his  memory. 

"  Of  course  not,"  he  heard  himself  saying  soothingly,  while  his 
legs  felt  going  forward,  losing  all  the  ground  so  laboriously  won. 

"  Then  you  do  believe  the  angel  moved  ?  "  she  asked  eagerly. 

"  Don't  I  see  her  moving  ?  "  he  replied. 

Miss  Gentry  looked  down  from  her  doorstep  more  in  sorrow 
than  in  anger.  "  You're  a  married  man  !  "  she  reminded  him 
again. 

"  And  does  marriage  pick  out  a  man's  eyes — like  a  goat- 
sucker ?  "  He  felt  too  near  her  now  to  back  out,  and  he  put 
forth  his  hand  for  hers,  not  without  nervousness  at  the  needle. 
Could  his  father  have  seen  him  now,  he  might  have  thought  his 
son  not  even  "  moral."  But  Miss  Gentry  dexterously  met  the 
amorous  palm  with  a  tract.     "  That'll  open  your  eyes,"  she  said. 

To  feel  a  flabby  piece  of  paper  instead  of  a  warm  hand  is  not 


32  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

conducive  to  theological  persuasion  :    all  Bundock's  dissenting 
blood  rushed  to  his  head. 

"  There's  two  opinions  about  that,"  he  snorted. 

"  There  are  two  opinions,"  Miss  Gentry  assented  placidly ; 
"  one  wrong  and  the  other  mine." 

"  Oh,  of  course  !  "  he  sneered.  "  The  Church  is  always  infallible." 

"  We're  eighteen  and  a  half  centuries  old,"  said  Miss  Gentry 
freezingly. 

"  Did  you  put  that  in  your  census  paper  ?  "  retorted  the 
humorist. 

Miss  Gentry  winced.  She  was  weary  of  the  jokes  that  had 
desolated  Bradmarsh,  yet  she  was  conscious  of  having  let  her 
landlady's  estimate  of  her  age  go  by  default. 

"  I  had  no  paper  to  fill  up,"  she  reminded  him  frigidly.  "  But 
if  there  was  a  census  of  religions,  you'd  certainly  be  among  the 
mushrooms." 

"  Better  than  being  among  the  mummies."  Bundock's  father 
might  have  clapped  his  palsied  hands,  to  hear  this  defender  of 
the  faith.  But  Miss  Gentry  mistook  this  fair  retort  in  kind  for 
another  allusion  to  the  personal  census. 

"  I  thought  you  could  discuss  like  a  gentleman  !  "  It  was  a 
cunning  shaft,  and  Squibs,  seizing  this  moment  to  rub  herself 
against  the  postman's  leggings,  he  replied  more  mildly  :  "  What's 
the  use  of  going  by  age — except  the  Age  of  Reason  ?  " 

"  Then  be  guided  by  Reason."  Miss  Gentry  stitched  implac- 
ably. "If  the  Almighty  meant  prayer  to  be  medicine,  why  did 
He  create  castor-oil  ?  " 

Bundock  was  dumbfounded. 

"  Or  Epsom  salts  ?  "  she  added  triumphantly. 

"  They're  for  cattle  which  can't  pray,"  he  answered  with  an 
inspiration. 

Miss  Gentry's  needle  stabbed  the  air.  But  she  recovered 
herself.     "  Then  why  do  you  eat  rhubarb  pie  ?  " 

"  Because  it's  nice."     He  grinned. 

"  But  rhubarb's  a  medicine  !  " 

He  countered  cleverly.  "  We  don't  mind  taking  medicine — so 
long  as  we're  well !  "  We  !  He  was  identifying  himself  with  his 
despised  Brethren  :  such  is  human  nature  under  attack.  But 
Miss  Gentry  was  not  at  the  end  of  her  resources. 

"  Well,  what  do  you  do  when  you  break  your  legs  ?  Pray  the 
bones  straight  ?  " 


BUNDOCK  ON  HIS  BEAT  33 

"  But  we  don't  break  our  legs.  I  never  heard  of  a  Peculiar 
breaking  his  leg." 

"  But  why  shouldn't  a  Peculiar  break  his  leg  ?  " 

"  That's  not  my  affair.  He  don't.  I've  got  Peculiars  all  over 
my  beat,  and  never  have  I  known  one  to  break  a  leg.  A  broken 
heart,  now !  " 

"  But  if  he  did  break  a  leg  ?  "  persisted  Miss  Gentry. 

"  If  any  one  could  break  a  leg,  it  would  be  me  !  "  he  said 
crossly. 

•'  Well,  then  what  would  you  do — if  you  broke  your  leg  ?  " 

Bundock  was  worn  out.  "  What's  the  good  of  meeting 
troubles  half-way  ?  "  he  snapped,  turning  on  his  heel. 

"  Yours  seem  to  have  come  more  than  half-way,"  scoffed  Miss 
Gentry. 

Bundock  clapped  his  hand  to  the  mud-patch,  stung  in  his 
tenderest  part.  He  wheeled  round  prestissimo,  raging  with 
repartee.  But  the  door  had  closed — too  late  !  Solitary,  the 
sable  Squibs  dominated  the  doorstep — like  a  sardonic  spirit. 

Bundock  was  turning  away  angrily,  though  now  fearlessly, 
when  \vith  a  sudden  thought  he  caught  up  the  cat  and  plucked 
out  one  of  her  hairs.  It  was  not  revenge — it  was  merely  that  his 
youngest  daughter  had  a  sty,  for  which  he  believed  the  black 
hair  an  infallible  remedy. 


CHAPTER  II 
JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS 

Give  me  simple  lah  outing  folk, 
Who  love  their  work, 

Whose  virtue  is  a  song 

To  cheer  God  along. 

Thoreau. 


Thus  it  was  that  the  days  passed  without  any  literate  and 
discreet  female  descending  on  Frog  Farm  or  any  rejuvenation 
appearing  in  Martha's  bonnet ;  and  the  unread  letter  lay — 
guarded  by  two  china  dogs — on  the  parlour  mantelpiece  awaiting 
the  carrier.  For  it  had  been  decided,  after  nightly  discussions 
that  were  a  change  for  Caleb  from  the  Christadelphian  curtain- 
lectures,  to  fall  back  on  Jinny  after  all.  She  was  to  read  it  to 
Martha  in  Caleb's  careful  absence,  and  was  to  be  stopped  if  the 
improper  seemed  looming. 

Alas,  the  best-laid  schemes  of  mice  and  Marthas  gang  agley, 
and  by  the  day  that  Jinny's  horn  resounded  along  the  raised 
road  that  led  to  the  farm,  the  world  was  changed  for  Caleb  and 
Martha.  There  was,  in  fact — for  the  first  time  in  Jinny's 
experience — neither  of  the  twain  to  meet  her  as  Methusalem 
ambled  under  the  drooping  witch-elms  towards  the  twin  doors. 

It  was  a  tilt-cart, .  with  two  tall  wheels,  and  although  Jinny 
steered  it  and  packed  it  and  unpacked  it,  and  scoured  it  and 
hitched  Methusalem  to  it,  its  weather-beaten  canvas  blazoned  in 
fading  black  letters  the  legend  : 

Daniel  Quarles 
*5  Carrier 
Little  Bradmarsh. 

You  gather  that  she  operated  under  the  shadow  of  a  great 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  35 

name,  greatest  as  being  masculine.  Self-standing  careers  for 
women  had  not  yet  dawned  on  the  world.  If  the  first  faint 
cloud  of  feminism  had  appeared  that  very  year  in  New  York,  no 
bigger  than  a  man's  pants,  the  Bloomerites  had  but  added  to 
the  gaiety  of  mankind,  and  in  rural  Essex,  with  the  exception  of 
dressmaking,  wherein  map.  appeared  unnatural,  women  were  the 
recognized  practitioners  only  of  witchcraft  or  fortune-telling  or 
the  concoction  of  philters;  professions  that  were  the  peculiar 
province  of  crones  scarcely  to  be  considered  sexed.  Though 
women  earned  money  by  plaiting  straw,  they  had  husbands  on 
the  premises.  Widows,  of  course,  for  whom  there  was  no  pro- 
vision outside  the  Chipstone  poorhouse,  were  allowed  to  maintain 
themselves  more  manfully  than  spinsters  :  but  then  they  were 
"  relicts "  of  the  mascuhne,  had  served — so  to  speak — an 
apprenticeship  under  it.  But  the  business  of  plying  between 
Chipstone  and  Bradma];sh  was  a  peculiarly  male  occupation,  and 
even  the  venerable  name  of  Daniel  Quarles  would  not  have 
suflBced  to  shield  or  install  Jinny  had  she  jumped  into  his  place 
as  abruptly  as  Nip  was  apt  to  jump  into  the  cart. 

No,  Rome  was  not  built  in  a  day,  nor  could  Jinny  have  become 
the  carrier  "  all  of  an  onplunge,"  as  Caleb  would  have  put  it. 
That  would  have  shocked  the  manners  and  morals  of  Bradmarsh, 
both  Little  and  Long,  and  upset  the  decorum  of  Chipstone.  A 
gradual  preparation  had  been  necessary,  a  transition  by  which 
Jinny  changed  into  the  carrier  as  imperceptibly  as  she  had 
ripened  into  the  girl.  At  first  the  small  "  furriner  " — the  carried 
and  not  the  carrier — reposing  in  the  cart  because,  after  smallpox 
had  snatched  away  both  her  parents  in  the  same  week,  her 
grandfather,  who  had  imported  her,  had  nowhere  else  to  put 
her ;  playing  in  the  great  canvas-covered  playground  that  held 
as  many  heights,  depths,  and  obstacles  as  a  steeplechase  course  ; 
petted  by  every  client  for  her  helplessness  before  her  helpfulness 
gave  her  a  second  lease  of  favour  ;  bearing  a  literally  larger  and 
larger  hand  in  "  Gran'fer's "  transactions  as  he  grew  older  and 
older ;  correcting  with  cautious  tact  his  memories,  his  accounts, 
his  muddled  bookings  and  deliveries,  in  due  course  ousting  the 
octogenarian  even  from  his  place  on  the  driving-board  and 
carrying  him  first  by  her  side  and  then  inside  in  his  second 
childhood,  just  as  he  had  carried  her  in  her  first — a  stage  in 
which  his  cackle  with  the  customers  carried  on  the  continuity  of 
the  male  tradition  ;   leaving  him  at  home  on  bad  days — whether 


36  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

his  own  or  Nature's — and  then  altogether  in  the  winter,  and  then 
altogether  in  the  spring,  and  then  altogether  in  the  autumn,  and 
finally — when  he  reached  his  nineties — altogether  in  the  summer ; 
Jinny  the  Carrier  was — it  will  be  seen — a  shock  so  subtly  prepared 
and  so  long  discounted  as  to  have  been  practically  imperceptible. 
She  might  crack  Daniel's  heavy  whip,  but  nobody  felt  the 
flourish  as  other  than  vicarious,  if  not  indeed  a  sort  of  play- 
acting evoking  the  pleasure  a  more  sophisticated  audience  finds 
in  Rosalind's  swashbucklings.  Not  that  she  made  any  brazen 
pretences  to  equality  in  lifting  boxes ;  she  sat  with  due  feminine 
humility  while  male  muscles  swelled  and  contracted  under  her 
presiding  smile  and  the  rippling  music  of  her  thanks. 

Here  was,  in  fact,  the  prosaic  purpose  of  the  little  horn  slung 
at  her  side — her  one  apparent  embellishment  of  the  tradition  : 
it  summoned  her  slavish  superiors  so  that  she  might  be  spared 
alighting  and  re-climbing  with  goods.  In  face  of  the  accuracy  of 
her  operations,  this  display  of  helplessness  probably  helped  to 
remove  the  sting  of  an  otherwise  intolerable  feminine  sufficiency  : 
it  was  perhaps  the  secret  of  her  popularity.  Even  with  the  most 
Lilliputian  packets  nobody  expected  Jinny  to  descend  and  knock 
at  their  doors — one  blast  and  old  and  young  tumbled  over  one 
another  to  greet  the  coming  or  speed  the  parting  parcel.  It  was 
indeed  as  if  a  good  fairy  should  condescend  to  do  your  marketing, 
a  fairy  in  a  straw  bonnet  (piquantly  tied  under  the  chin  in  a  bow 
with  drooping  ends),  a  fairy  whose  brilliant  smile  and  teeth  and 
flowing  ringlets  could  convert  even  an  order  for  jalap  into  poetry, 
nay,  induce  in  the  eternal  masculine  a  craving  for  more.  In  fine, 
so  topsy-turvily  had  this  snail-paced  transition  worked,  so 
slowly  had  Jinny's  freedom  broadened  down  from  precedent  to 
precedent,  that  when  strangers  expressed  disapproval  at  these 
mannish  courses.  Little  Bradmarsh  was  shocked.  Long  Bradmarsh 
surprised,  and  Chipstone  scornful.  Not  that  they  were  at  all 
prepared  to  argue  the  question  in  the  abstract.  Their  prejudice 
against  carrying  as  a  profession  for  women  remained  as  rooted 
and  unshaken  as  the  critic's.  Women  ?  Who  was  speaking  of 
women  ?  Jinny  was  Jinny — a  being  unique  and  irreplaceable, 
"  bless  her  bonny  fice."  It  contributed  to  her  unquestionability 
that  the  Quarleses  had  been  carriers  for  a  hundred  years — and 
more. 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  37 


II 


Nor  did  Jinny,  for  her  part,  generalize  on  the  other  side  or 
take  any  conscious  interest  in  the  emancipation  of  her  sex.  Her 
horn  blew  no  challenge  to  the  world.  It  did  not  even  occur  to 
her  that  she  was  doing  anything  out  of  the  common — the  tilt-cart 
had  been  her  nursery,  it  was  now  her  place  of  business.  She  had 
come  into  its  foreground  so  unconsciously  that  it  was  not  as  a 
good  fairy  that  she  saw  herself,  nor  even  as  an  attractive  asset 
of  the  Quarles  concern,  but  as  a  busy  toiler — driven  from  morning 
to  night  rather  than  driving — and  handicapped  not  only  by  her 
household  and  garden  work,  her  goats  and  poultry,  but  by  a 
nonagenarian  grandfather,  shaky  in  health  and  immovable  in 
opinion.  Fortunately  for  her  temper — and  for  the  chastening  of 
a  tongue  only  too  a-tingle  with  rustic  wit — Jinny  regarded  the 
cantankerous  patriarch  as  no  more  an  object  for  back-talk  than 
a  suckling.  It  had  become  second  nature  to  soothe  and  humour 
him  ;  and  she  knew  him  as  she  knew  the  highways  and  byways 
in  the  dark  or  the  snow :  where  to  turn  and  where  to  go  round, 
where  to  skirt  a  swamp  and  where  to  shave  a  ditch.  By  way  of 
compensation  there  was  his  affection — as  primitive  as  Nip's  or 
Methusalem's — and  evoking  as  primitive  a  response.  For  Jinny 
was  none  of  your  genteel  heroines  with  ethereal  emotions  and 
complex  aspirations. 

•It  was  not  that  Nature  had  not  cast  her  for  a  poetic  part — she 
was  small  and  slender  enough,  and  her  light  grey  eyes  behind 
dark  lashes  sufficiently  subtilized  her  expression,  and  when  she 
was  hesitating  between  two  words — not  two  opinions,  for  she 
always  had  one — her  little  mouth  would  purse  itself  enchantingly. 
There  was  gentility  too  about  her  toes.  As  her  grandfather 
remarked  with  his  archaic  pronouns  and  plurals  :  "  That  has  the 
smallest  fitten  I  ever  saw  to  a  wench  1  "  She  certainly  did  not 
dress  the  part,  for  despite  the  witchery  of  the  bonnet,  her  worka- 
day skirt  and  stout  shoes  proclaimed  the  village  girl,  as  her 
hands  proclaimed  the  drudge  who  scoured  and  scrubbed  and 
baked  and  dug  and  manured :  indeed  what  with  her  own  goats 
and  her  farmyard  commissions,  she  was  almost  as  familiar  with 
the  grosser  aspects  of  animal  life  as  that  strangely  romanticized 
modern  figure,  the  hospital  nurse.  The  delicate  solicitude  of 
Martha  on  her  behalf  was  thus  a  pure  morbidity,  for  in  going  to 
and  fro  like  a  weaver's  shuttle,   Jinny  could  scarcely  remain 


38  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

ignorant  that  women  were  as  liable  to  offspring  as  any  other 
females,  though  it  seemed  a  part  of  Nature's  order  that  had  no 
more  to  do  with  herself  than  the  strange,  hirsute  growths  on  the 
masculine  face — or  for  the  matter  of  that  on  Miss  Gentry's. 

Mr.  Fallow,  the  old  pastor  of  Little  Bradmarsh,  who,  though 
despised  and  rejected  of  Dissent,  required — being  human — 
comestibles,  candles,  and  shoe-strings  from  Chipstone,  as  well  as 
the  disposal  of  his  honey  and  his  smaller  tithes,  was  among 
Jinny's  favourite  clients,  her  original  horror  of  Bradmarsh 
Church  having  been  early  modified  by  an  accidental  peep  one 
weekday  morning,  which  revealed  its  priest  as  its  sole  occupant. 
Yet,  standing  in  his  place  in  his  white  surplice, 'he  was  going 
through  the  service  with  such  devout  self-forgetfulness  that  the 
confused  child  wondered  whether  the  Satan  of  worldliness  had 
him  so  entirely  gripped  as  she  had  been  given  to  understand. 
She  did  not  know  that  this  very  praying  all  to  himself  would 
have  shocked  Miss  Gentry  as  savouring  of  the  abhorred  High 
Churchmanship.  Indeed  "  little  better  than  a  Papist "  the 
Chipstone  curate  had  pronounced  the  harmless  old  widower. 

He  for  his  part  had  long  admired  the  little  carrier,  and  perceiving 
the  fine  shape  of  her  calloused  fingers,  no  less  than  the  smallness 
of  her  sturdy  shoes,  and  enjoying  the  tang  of  her  tongue — for  the 
cottage  women,  though  nimbler  than  their  lords,  were  not  witty 
— ^he  had  indulged  his  antiquarian  vein  (and  the  abundant  leisure 
due  to  the  ravages  of  Dissent)  by  tracing  for  her  a  less  plebeian 
and  more  Churchy  pedigree.  Foiled  in  the  hope  of  connecting  her 
with  Francis  Quarles  of  "  Emblems  "  fame,  he  found  in  Norden's 
list  of  the  Ancient  Halls  of  Essex  a  Spring  Elm  Manor  apper- 
taining to  one  Jonathan  Quarles.  The  flockless  pastor  had  even 
journeyed  in  quest  of  this  Hall  and  found  illogical  confirmation 
in  the  fact  of  its  continued  existence,  in  all  the  pride  of  muUioned 
windows  and  lily-strewn  if  muddy  moat,  though  with  its  private 
chapel  turned  into  a  stable  and  its  piscina  bricked  over.  Hence- 
forward he  saw  in  the  exuberant  vitality  and  imperious  obstinacy 
of  Daniel  Quarles  only  an  impoverished  reincarnation  of  hard- 
living  but  ecclesiastically  correct  squiredom,  while  in  Jinny,  with 
her  generous  visits  to  the  ailing  and  bed-ridden  on  her  route,  he 
elected  to  behold  a  re-embodied  Lady  Bountiful,  pride  of  a 
feudal  parish.  What  was  prosaically  certain,  however,  was  that 
Jinny  had  not  even  the  education  of  Bundock's  bunch  of  girls, 
the   only   school   she  had   ever   attended   being  the   Peculiars' 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  39 

Sunday-school  held  at  a  house  adjoining  the  chapel  in  an  interval 
between  the  services.  Thither,  as  to  the  sen'ices — ^her  grand- 
father being  a  Wesleyan — she  had  been  convoyed  regularly  by 
Caleb,  packed  into  a  cart  with  as  many  of  the  Flynt  boys  as  had 
not  vet  flown  off. 

But  the  business  itself  forced  reading  and  writing  upon  her, 
though  when  its  sole  responsibility  devolved  on  her,  and  it  was 
no  longer  necessary  to  confute  the  old  man's  memory  by  the 
written  word  or  figure,  she  found  herself  agreeably  able  to 
dispense  with  the  learned  arts. 

Welcomed  at  lonely  farmyards  where  fierce  dogs  sometimes 
broke  their  chains  for  the  joy  of  licking  her  hand  or  of  flying  at 
Nip's  throat ;  not  less  welcome  in  village  High  Streets,  where 
every  other  house  would  ply  her  fussily  with  orders  that  she  took 
coolly  and  without  a  single  note,  her  bosom  knowledge  of  every- 
body's business  and  her  dramatic  interpretation  of  any  abnormal 
commission  infusing  life  into  her  work  that  saved  her  from  slips 
of  memory  ;  adored  by  all  the  swains  and  yokels  who  hauled  her 
goods  and  chattels  up  and  down,  but  radiating  only  a  frosty 
sunshine  in  return,  for  none  had  ever  been  able  to  pass  the  ice- 
barrier  that  separated  her  private  self  from  her  professional 
geniality  ;  jumping  down  herself  only  to  give  Christian  burial  to 
hapless  moles,  rats,  shrews,  leverets,  and  blood-stained  feathers, 
or  to  glean  for  lonely  old  women  or  the  numerous  and  im- 
poverished Pennymole  family  the  unconscious  largesse  of  more 
careless  drivers — turnips,  lumps  of  coal,  wisps  of  hay  ;  chaffering 
with  beaming  shopkeepers  on  behalf  of  her  clients,  and  hail- 
fellow-well-met  with  her  fellow-carriers,  encountered  at  cross- 
roads or  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  ;  Jinny  pursued  her  unmaidenly 
career  in  fine  weather  or  foul,  sometimes  wayworn,  wind-whipped, 
rain-drenched,  and  with  aching  forehead,  but  more  often  with  a 
vital  joy  that  was  not  least  keen  when  Methusalem — cloud- 
exhaling  and  clogged  by  snow  that  sometimes  raised  the  road  as 
high  as  the  hedges — had  to  plough  his  way  along  a  track  hewn 
out  by  labourers,  with  here  and  there  a  siding  cut  in  the  glittering 
mass  for  carts  to  pass  each  other  by.  Those  were  days  not 
devoid  of  danger  :  road,  hedge,  ditch,  and  field  obliterated  in  one 
snowy  expanse.  Once  Jinny's  cart  had  to  be  dug  out  like  a 
crusted  fossil  of  the  Ice  Age — and  only  the  agonized  howling  of 
Nip  had  brought  rescue. 


40  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

III 

It  was  the  first  time  he  had  justified  his  air  of  managing  the 
whole  concern  round  which  he  barked  and  bounded  and  scurried 
as  though  Methusalem  and  Jinny  were  his  minions.  He  had 
indeed  commandeered  them — jumping  originally  out  of  nowhere 
on  to  the  tail-board — and  however  he  strayed  from  the  path  of 
their  duty  in  his  numberless  tangential  excursions  and  expedi- 
tions, they  knew  he  would  never  abandon  them. 

Like  many  other  great  characters  Nip  was  a  mongrel.  His 
foundation  was  fox-terrier,  and  he  had  preserved  the  cleverness 
of  the  strain  without  its  pluck.  To  strangers,  indeed,  he  seemed 
a  very  David  among  dogs,  attacking,  as  he  sometimes  did, 
canine  Goliath s.  But  no  dog  is  a  hero  to  his  mistress,  and  after 
he  had  adopted  her.  Jinny  discovered  that  these  resounding 
assaults  on  the  bulkier  were  but  bravado  passages,  based  on  his 
flair  that  the  bigger  dog  was  also  the  bigger  coward.  That  was 
where  his  brains  came  in,  as  well  as  his  baser  breed.  A  sniff  at 
a  real  fighter  and  Nip  would  evade  combat,  sauntering  off  with 
a  nonchalant  air.  A  splash  of  brown  on  his  brainpan  and  about 
his  ears,  and  a  dab  of  black  on  his  snout  were — with  his  leathern 
collar — the  sole  touches  of  relief  in  his  sleek  whiteness.  His 
head — beautifully  poised  and  shaped — with  its  bright  dark- 
brown  eye,  eloquently  expressive  and  passing  easily  from  love 
to  greediness,  from  shyness  to  shame,  invited  many  a  pat  from 
lovers  of  the  soulful.  Yet  to  hear'  him  bolt  a  rabbit  was  to 
imagine  a  demon  on  the  war-path  :  in  a  flash  the  cart  would  be 
left  a  furlong  behind  or  athwart ;  his  raucous  staccato  yells  filled 
the  meadows  with  echoes  of  blood-lust  and  revenge.  But  long 
experience  had  dulled  Jinny's  solicitude  for  Bunny  :  never  once 
was  there  a  sign  of  a  kill.  Sometimes,  indeed,  when  Nip  was 
hunting  a  rat,  the  creature  would  run  across  the  path  under  his 
very  nose,  but  that  nose,  pushing  eagerly  for  far-off  game,  never 
seemed  able  to  readjust  itself  to  what  was  under  it.  All  the 
which  maladroitness  was  probably  artfulness,  Nip  scenting 
shrewdly  that  a  successful  sports-dog  would  have  been  hounded 
out.  He  knew  well  the  foolish,  treacherous  heart  of  his  mistress, 
who  actually  misled  the  hunt  those  autumn  mornings  that 
brought  the  high-mettled  hares  across  their  path  with  ears  taut 
.  and  every  muscle  tragically  astrain.  Up  would  come  the  beagles, 
with  a  long  processional  flutter  of  waving  white  tails,  nosing 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  41 

forlornly  and  barking  dismally,  while  he — panting  to  put  them 
right — was  tied  paw  and  paw.  How  they  set  him  quivering, 
those  horn-tootlings  of  the  gorgeous  Master,  though  they  did 
not  go  to  his  bowels  as  much  as  those  staccato  chivies  that 
suggested  that  the  green-and-white  gentleman  was  one  of  them- 
selves rather  than  a  biped,  or  as  those  more  elaborately  contorted 
cries  and  rousing  thong-cracks  of  the  Whipper-in.  A  fellow- 
feeling  makes  us  wondrous  kind.  And  when  all  these  hunters 
— four-footed  or  two-footed — including  the  draggletail  of  fat, 
breathless  farmers  and  wheezing  females,  were  remorselessly  sent 
the  wrong  way  by  his  brutal  mistress,  the  poor  dog  could  not 
refrain  from  wailing. 

Even  when  the  hare  did  not  cross  her  path,  her  horn,  imitating 
the  professional  toot,  would  allure  and  misguide  the  distant  dogs. 
Nip's  own  relatives,  the  foxhounds,  more  rarely  came  his  way, 
but  though  his  mistress's  sympathies  with  the  quarry  were  less 
marked — ^her  chickens  being  precious — Nip  was  still  held  in. 
But  amid  all  his  disgust  the  cunning  dog  remembered  that  his 
days  of  foraging  for  himself — before  he  had  picked  up  Jinny — 
had  not  been  rosy  and  replete  :  caterers  like  Jinny,  he  realized, 
did  not  grow  on  every  cart,  not  to  mention  the  cushioned  basket 
from  which  he  could  bark  at  everything  on  the  road,  or  within 
which,  with  a  huge  grunt  of  satisfaction,  he  could  curl  into  an 
odorous  dream. 

A  contrast  in  all  save  colour  was  the  stolid  Methusalem, 
though  he  too  was  of  hybrid  stock.  While  his  hairy  fetlocks 
proclaimed  a  kinship  with  the  draught-breed  of  the  shire,  he 
lacked  that  gross  spirit,  and  while  his  flying  mane  and  tail 
flaunted  an  affinity  with  the  fiery  Arab,  he  was  equally  deficient 
in  that  high  mettle.  By  what  romantic  episode  he  had  come 
into  being,  whether  through  the  wild^oats  of  an  Arabian  ancestor, 
or  the  indiscretion  of  a  mere  circus-horse,  or  whether  his  tossing 
hair  and  tail  were  the  heritage  from  a  Shetland  pony — as  his 
moderate  stature  suggested — is  not  recorded  in  any  stud-book. 
But  it  was  impossible  to  see  him  without  the  word  "  steed  " 
coming  into  the  mind,  and  equally  impossible  to  sit  behind  him 
without  thinking  of  a  plough-horse.  "  When  Oi  first  see  that 
rollin'  in  the  brook  afore  'twas  broke  in,"  Gaffer  Quarles  would 
relate,  "  Oi  was  minded  of  the  posters  of  Mazeppa  at  the  Fair, 
and  christened  that  accordin'."  It  was  only  when  he  discovered 
that  this  blonde  beast  was  a  whited  sepulchre,  that  "  Mazeppa  " 


42  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  exchanged  for  "  Methusalem,"  as  though  that  antediluvian 
worthy  had  always  been  a  doddering  millenarian,  and  not  at  one 
time  in  the  prime  of  his  hundreds.  The  name  had  at  least  the 
effect  of  banishing  expectation  ;  his  mere  amble  was  an  agreeable 
surprise.  As  a  matter  of  fact  Methusalem  had  still  his  Mazeppa 
moments.  They  came  on  Tuesday  and  Friday  evenings  when 
he  was  loosed  from  the  shafts  ;  at  which  moments  he  would  roll 
on  his  back,  kick  up  his  heels  and  gallop  madly  round  the  goat- 
pasture  to  the  alarm  of  the  tethered  browsers.  And  even  at  his 
professional  pace  he  always  kept  his  mane  flying.  One  accom- 
plishment, however,  Methusalem  had  which  no  "  Mazeppa " 
steed  could  have  bettered,  nay,  which  made  a  circus  pedigree 
plausible.  He  could  lift  the  latch  of  gates  with  his  nose  and 
walk  through.  It  was  a  trick  which  Jinny,  with  her  habit  of 
not  alighting,  had  fostered  in  him  :  if  the  gate  did  not  swing  to, 
she  could  usually  close  it  with  the  butt-end  of  her  whip — through 
the  cart-rear  at  the  worst — a  procedure  which,  with  her  further 
habit  of  using  short  cuts  and  even  private  tracks  like  that  at 
Bellropes  Park,  saved  not  a  little  time,  and  was  some  compensa- 
tion for  Methusalem's  general  crawl. 

If  the  local  carrying  business  had  grown  indistinguishable  from 
Jinny,  it  seemed  no  less  bound  up  with  her  four-footed  com- 
panions, whose  ghostly  figures,  seen  looming  through  the  vv^intry 
dusk,  sent  a  glow  of  warmth  through  the  bleak  countryside. 


IV 

But  to-day  Jinny's  horn,  Nip's  yap,  and  Methusalem's  pseudo- 
spirited  pawing,  were  alike  powerless  to  evoke  the  familiar  forth- 
bustling  of  Caleb  and  Martha.  Only  cocks  crowed  and  doves 
moaned,  while  from  the  river-slope  came  the  lowing  of  cattle. 
Alarmed  for  the  lonely  and  aged  couple.  Jinny  jumped  down  and 
tapped  at  the  door.  Nobody  replying,  she  lifted  the  latch  and 
came  from  the  joyous  spring  sunshine  on  a  chill,  silent  piece  of 
hall-way  in  which  even  the  tall  clock  had  stopped  dead.  She 
peeped  perfunctorily  into  the  musty  parlour  on  her  way  to  the 
kitchen — the  lozenge-shaped  motto  :  "  When  He  giveth  quiet- 
ness, who  then  can  make  trouble  ? "  seemed  to  have  taken  on  a 
strange  and  solemn  significance.  But  she  knew  that  the  kitchen 
was  the  likeliest  lair,  so  not  pausing  to  examine,  the  ominously 
Hiopened  letter  addressed  to  Mrs.  Flynt  which  she  espied  on  the 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  43 

mantelpiece,  she  pressed  on  to  the  rear.  The  kitchen,  however, 
was  still  more  desolate,  not  only  of  the  couple,  but  of  the  habitual 
glow  on  the  cavernous  hearth.  What  wonder  if  Nip,  who  had 
followed  her,  set  up  an  uncanny  whining !  She  halloaed  up  the 
staircase,  but  that  only  aggravated  the  silence.  She  dashod 
next  door  to  the  shepherd's  section — similar  solitude  !  With  a 
feeling  of  lead  at  her  heart  she  rushed  back  into  the  ironic  sun- 
shine and  towards  the  orchard — now  unbearably  beautiful  in  its 
blossoming — and  as  she  was  approaching  a  remote  corner  that 
harboured  the  pigsty  in  which  Martha's  pet  sow  carried  on  a 
lucrative  maternity,  she  was  half  relieved  to  collide  with  Caleb 
who  was  moving  houseward  with  haggard  eyes  and  carpet 
slippers. 

"  Is  anything  the  matter  ?"  she  gasped. 

"  Sow  glad  you've  come.  The  missus  keeps  arxing  for  you. 
We've  been  up  all  night  with  her." 

"  With  your  wife  ?  " 

He  looked  astonished.     "  Noa,  Maria  !  " 

Jinny's  full  relief  found  vent  in  a  peal  of  laughter. 

"  It's  no  laughin'  matter — the  missus  wants  ye  to  tell  the  wet 


to  come  at  once." 


"  But  what's  the  matter  with  her  ?  "  inquired  Jinny,  still 
unable  to  rise  to  his  seriousness.     "  A  snout-ache  ?  " 

"  She's  a  goner,"  said  Caleb  solemnly.  "  We've  reared  up 
nine  boys,  but  Maria's  been  more  trouble  than  the  lot.  The 
missus  would  bring  her  up  by  hand,  and  Oi  always  prophesied 
she  wouldn't  live." 

Amusedly  aware  that  Maria's  progeny  had  already  exceeded 
sixty.  Jinny  offered  to  visit  the  patient. 

"  Do — that'll  comfort  the  missus  and  ye'll  know  better  what 
to  tell  Jorrow.  Oi'U  hold  your  hoss.  You  know  the  way — 
behind  the  red  may-tree." 

Jinny  smiled  again.  The  idea  of  Methusalem  needing  restraint 
amused  her,  but  she  did  not  dispel  Caleb's  romantic  illusion. 

The  sick  sty  was  visible  through  a  half-door  that  gave  at  once 
air  and  view,  and  over  which  Nip  at  once  bounded  on  to  the 
startled  Martha's  back  as  she  hung  over  the  prostrate  pig  on  its 
bed  of  dirty  straw.  Maria  belonged  to  the  Society  of  Large 
Black  Pigs,  and  snuffed  the  world  through  a  long,  fine  snout ; 
but  life  had  evidently  lost  its  savour,  for  the  poor  sow  was 
turning  restlessly. 


44  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Oh,  Jinny !  "  moaned  Martha.     "  She  had  thirteen  last  time, 
and  I  knew  it  was  an  unluckv  number." 

"  Nonsense  !  "  quoth  Jinny  gaily.  "  Twelve  would  have  been 
less  lucky — at  the  price  I  got  you  !  " 

"  Yes,  dearie,  but  I'm  not  thinking  of  prices.  She  was  a 
birthday  present  for  my  loneliness." 

"  I  know,"  said  Jinny  gently. 

"  No,  you  don't."  She  wrung  her  hands.  The  self-possession 
Caleb  had  admired  when  the  letter  broke  on  their  lives  was  no 
longer  hers.  "  You've  got  lots  of  Brethren  and  Sisters,  but  I've 
got  nobody  to  break  bread  with,  no  fraternal  gatherings  to  go 
to,  and  even  Flynt  won't  be  immersed,  though  he's  in  his  sixty- 
nine  and  we  must  all  fall  asleep  some  day.  So  it  was  a  comfort 
to  have  Maria  following  me  about  everywhere  like  Nip  does  you, 
and  I  do  believe  she's  got  more  sense  than  the  so-called  Christians 
here,  and  would  be  the  first  to  pray  for  the  peace  of  Jerusalem 
with  me  if  she  could  only  speak.  But  now  even  Maria  may  be 
taken  from  me.     You'll  send  Jorrow  at  once,  won't  you,  dearie  \  " 

"  But  what's  the  matter  with  her  ?  " 

"  Can't  you  see  ?  All  night  she  kept  rooting  up  the  ground. 
Oh,  I  hope  it  isn't  fever." 

"  Rubbish  !  Look  at  the  skin  of  her  ears.  And  she  isn't 
coughing  at  all.     What's  she  been  overeating  ?  " 

"  Nothing — only  the  grass  Flynt  has  been  cutting." 

"  Why  don't  you  give  her  a  dose  of  castor-oil  ?  " 

"  She  won't  take  it.  She  knows  we've  covered  it  up — I  told 
you  she's  got  as  much  brains  as  a  Christian." 

"  Let  me  try  and  get  it  down." 

"  It  is  down.     The  piglets  ate  the  mess  up." 

"  Oh  dear  1 "  laughed  Jinny.  "  That  zvill  need  Jorrow. 
Anything  else,  Mrs.  Flynt  ?  " 

'^  I  can't  think  this  morning.     Ask  Flynt." 

Caleb,  however,  proved  equally  distraught. 

"  There  was  summat  extra  special,  Oi  know,"  he  said,  his  red- 
shirted  arm  clinging  heroically  to  Methusalem's  bridle,  "  for 
here's  the  knot  in  my  hankercher.  But  what  it  singafies  Lord 
onny  knows." 

"  It  wasn't  a  new  shirt  ?  "  she  suggested  slyly. 

He  shook  his  head.  "  Noa,  noa  ;  this  keeps  her  colour  as  good 
as  new.  But  the  missus  did  make  a  talk  about  my  Sunday 
neckercher." 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  45 

"  I'll  get  you  a  new  one.     Plain  or  speckled  ?  " 
"  Oi  leaves  that  to  you,  Jinny — you  know  more  about  stoylish 
things." 

V 

On  her  winding  and  much-halting  way  to  Chipstone,  Jinny 
took  advantage  of  the  absence  of  the  noble  family  and  the  com- 
plaisance of  her  customer,  the  lodge-keeper,  to  smuggle  her 
plebeian  vehicle  through  Bellropes  Park,  which  was  not  only  a 
mile  shorter,  but  dodged  the  turnpike  with  its  aproned  harpy  of 
a  tollman  ;  she  loved  the  great  avenues  of  oaks,  and  the  shining 
lake,  the  game  of  swans,  and  the  sense  of  historic  splendour ; 
and  Nip,  as  if  with  a  sense  of  stolen  sweets,  sniffed  never  more 
happily,  though  when  they  got  within  view  of  the  water,  he  had 
to  be  summoned  back  to  ]iis  headquarters-basket  by  a  stern 
military  note,  a  combat  between  himself  and  the  swans  not 
commending  itself  to  his  mistress.  Some  of  these  irascible 
Graces  floated  now  on  the  margin,  meticulously  picking  their 
tail-feathers,  contorting  their  necks.  But  vastly  more  exciting 
were  those  of  the  flock  far  out  on  that  spacious  sparkle  of  brown 
water.  They  seemed  to  be  going  spring-mad  and  threshing  the 
scintillating  water  with  their  wings,  oaring  themselves  thus  along, 
each  one  infecting  the  other,  till  the  water  itself  seemed  to  be 
leaping  in  a  shimmering  frenzy  of  froth.  Even  the  ducks  reared 
up  or  stood  on  their  l\eads  in  a  sort  of  intoxication.  And  this 
sense  of  the  joy  and  beauty  of  the  spring  communicated  itself  to 
the  girl,  not  in  jubilance,  but  in  some  exquisite  wistfulness  :  some 
craving  of  the  blood  for  mysterious  adventure.  Something 
seemed  calling  at  once  out  of  the  past  and  out  of  the  future. 
And  then  her  thoughts  wandered  back  to  Frog  Farm  and  the 
Flynts  and  the  far-scattered  youths  with  whom  she  had  formerly 
ridden  to  Sunday-school,  and  suddenly  by  a  flash  from  her 
subconsciousness  she  recognized  the  writing  of  the  unopened 
letter  on  Martha's  mantelpiece  :  of  the  letter  she  had  scarcely 
looked  at.  Surely,  though  the  curves  were  bolder,  it  was  the 
work  of  the  very  same  male  hand  that  had  written  on  the  fly-leaf 
of  a  Peculiar  hymn-book  the  inspired  quatrain — which  she  had 
admired  from  her  childhood — beginning  : 

Steal  not  this  book  for  fear  of  shame  : 
an  admonition  she  thought  peculiarly  appropriate  to  the  holy 


46  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

book  it  guarded.  And  with  the  memory  of  the  fly-leaf  surged  up 
also  the  face — the  long-forgotten,  freckled  face  of  the  youngest 
and  most  headstrong  of  the  Flynt  boys :  the  Will,  flouted 
as  "  Carrots,"  but  in  her  opinion  the  handsomest  of  the  batch, 
who  had  always  loomed  over  her  with  such  grown-up  if  genial 
grandeur,  and  had  given  her  his  bull-roarer  and  threaded  birds' 
eggs  for  her  before  she  had  come  to  think  their  collection  wicked. 
What  a  hullabaloo  when  the  boy  disappeared — he  must  have 
been  hardly  thirteen,  she  began  computing — and  she,  the  child 
of  nine  or  so  who  could  have  comforted  the  distracted  Martha, 
had  dared  say  no  word,  because  he  had  made  her  swear  on  that 
very  hymn-book  to  keep  his  flight  silent.  Just  as  she  was 
permeated  by  the  solemnity  of  the  book  and  the  oath  on  it,  he 
had  thrown  it  away,  she  remembered,  thrown  it  into  the 
bushes  from  the  wagon  in  which  he  was  driving  her  home  from 
chapel. 

The  details  of  that  forgotten  summer  Sunday  began  to  come 
back  :  most  vividly  of  all,  the  boy  struggling  and  sobbing  when 
his  buttons  were  cut  off.  He  had  been  so  proud  of  his  new 
velvet  jacket  with  its  manifold  rows  of  blue  buttons,  and  lo  ! 
after  Sunday-school  his  father  had  appeared  with  a  somewhat 
crestfallen  look  and  a  pair  of  scissors,  saying,  "  You  don't  want 
all  this  flummery,"  while  Elder  Mawhood — evidently  the 
admonishing  angel — ^had  stood  grimly  by,  intoning  "  Pride  is 
abominable.     Wanity  must  be  rooted  out." 

The  boy  had  choked  back  his  sobs,  and  apparently  found 
solace  in  the  evening  hymns,  and  was  further  soothed  by  being 
allowed  at  his  own  request  to  drive  the  party  home.  It  was  felt 
— especially  by  Martha — some  compensation  for  the  buttons  was 
due  to  him.  Thus  when  the  wagon  had  reached  Swash  End  and 
the  bulk  of  the  Flynt  family  got  off  according  to  custom — mud 
and  weather  permitting — and  walked  up  to  Frog  Farm,  leaving 
Jinny  to  be  driven  round  the  long  detour  to  her  home  at  Black- 
water  Hall,  she  was  left  alone  with  Will. 

It  was  then  that,  having  asked  her  if  she  could  keep  a  secret 
and  being  assured  she  could,  he  informed  her  to  her  admiring 
horror  that  the  moment  he  had  safely  delivered  her  on  the  road 
by  the  Common,  he  would  turn  his  horse's  head  for  Harwich, 
where  (stabling  the  horse  and  wagon  so  that  his  parents  might 
trace  his  intention)  he  would  take  ship  as  a  cabin-boy  or  a 
stowaway  for  America,  where  he  was  sure  to  come  across  his 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  47 

brother  Ben,  and  never  would  she  see  him  again  in  Bradmarsh 
till  he  had  made  his  fortune. 

She  could  see  him  now,  under  a  late  sunset  that  was  like  his 
hair,  with  his  flashing,  freckled  face,  his  blazing  blue  eyes,  and 
his  poor,  defaced  jacket,  the  thready  stubs  of  the  big  buttons 
showing  like  scars.  Their  quaint  dialogue  came  back  vividly  to 
her. 

"  Oh,  Will,  but  can't  you  make  your  fortune  here  ?  " 

"  No,  thank  you — no  more  chapel  for  me  !  " 

"  I  know  it's  hard— and  you  did  look  beautiful  with  the 
buttons — but  isn't  it  more  beautiful  to  please  God  ?  " 

"  Rubbish  !     What  does  God  care  about  my  buttons  ?  " 

"  He's  pleased,  just  as  I  like  your  giving  me  birds'  eggs." 

"  But  I  didn't  give  my  buttons — they  were  snatched  from  me 
— through  that  beastly  old  Mawhood." 

"  But  Elder  Mawhood  knows  what  God  wants." 

"  Let  him  cut  off  his  own  nose  and  not  go  smelling  into  every- 
body's business.  The  other  day  he  made  poor  old  Sister  Tarbox 
get  riddy  of  her  cat." 

"  That  was  kindness,  because  it  had  to  be  shut  up  alone  all 
Sunday  while  she  was  at  chapel." 

"  I  believe  it  was  only  to  make  more  rats  for  him  to  kill." 

"  That's  not  true.  Will.  You  know  Sister  Tarbox  is  too  poor 
to  have  her  cottage  cleared." 

"  Well,  let  him  look  after  his  rats  and  cats — not  me." 

"  An  elder  must  do  his  duty." 

"  I  hate  elders  and  deacons  and  hymn-books.  Yah  !  I'm 
done  with  religion,  thank  God." 

"  Oh,  Will,  you  mustn't  speak  hke  that  1  " 

"  Fancy  stewing  in  chapel  in  weather  like  this  !  " 

"  Isn't  this  just  the  weather  to  thank  God  for  ?  " 

"  No— it's  all  siUiness." 

"  Oh,  WiU  !  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  !  You  ask  Brother  Bundock — I  don't  mean  old 
Mr.  Bundock.  I  asked  him  once  who  wrote  our  hymn-book  and 
he  said,  '  'Twixt  you  and  I,  the  village  idiot ! '  " 

"  You  are  talking  wickedly.  Will  " — there  were  tears  in  the 
voice  now.     "  You  mustn't  run  away,  that's  more  wicked." 

"  Oh — I  was  an  idiot  myself  to  tell  you.  You  are  going  to 
peach  on  me,  I  suppose." 

"  Peach  ?  " 


48  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Tell  your  grandfather  about  my  running  away." 

"  Not  if  you  don't  do  it." 

"  But  I  shall  do  it !  And  you  promised  to  keep  the  secret.  To 
tell  would  be  more  wicked  than  me." 

"  I  won't  tell,  but  you  mustn't  go." 

"  I  must.     Swear  not  to  betray  me.     Kiss  my  hymn-book." 

It  was  with  some  soothed  sense  of  restored  sanctities  that  she 
had  pressed  her  lips  to  the  holy  cover — she  still  remembered  its 
smell  and  taste,  salted  with  a  tear  of  her  own — but  what  a  fresh 
and  mightier  shock,  that  throwing  of  the  book  into  the  bushes  ! 

"  Stop  !  Stop  !  "  She  heard  the  little  girl's  horror-struck  cry 
over  the  years  ;  remembered  how,  as  he  laughed  and  drove  on 
furiously  with  her,  the  phrase  "  drive  like  the  devil "  had  come 
to  her  mind,  charged  for  the  first  time  with  meaning. 

Wilful  boy  had  had  his  way  :  he  had  escaped  from  England 
and  even — despite  his  diabolism — by  the  aid  of  the  ninepence  she 
had  insisted  on  bringing  down  from  her  money-box  while  he 
waited  trustfully  outside  her  grandfather's  domain.  But  she  had 
not  responded  in  kind  to  the  lordly  kiss  he  had  blown  her  as  he 
drove  off  to  America. 

"  Good-bye,  Httle  Jinny  !  " 

"  Good-bye,  Will.     Say  your  prayers  !  " 

"  Not  me  !  " 

"  Then  I  shall  pray  for  you  !  " 

When  the  hue  and  cry  was  out,  and  bellmen  were  busy  with  his 
carroty  head  and  velvet  jacket  with  the  buttons  cut  off,  little 
Jinny  had  also  gone  a-huncing — but  for  the  outraged  hymn-book. 
It  lay  now  still  hidden  in  a  drawer — the  one  secret  of  her  life — 
unmentioned  even  when  by  the  bulky  clue  of  the  horse  and 
cart  the  fugitive  had  been  traced,  as  he  designed. 

Yes,  she  must  disinter  this  hymn-book  of  his  from  its  hiding- 
place,  compare  the  inscription — she  knew  by  now  the  rhyme  was 
not  original — ^with  her  memory  of  Martha's  letter.  What  was  its 
postmark,  she  wondered.  Well,  she  would  find  that  out,  indeed 
the  whole  contents,  on  her  return  to  Frog  Farm,  Perhaps  he 
was  coming  back — his  fortune  already  made.  And  the  revived 
sense  of  his  wickedness  was  mixed  with  a  sense  of  her  own  soon- 
forgotten  resolve — or  threat — to  pray  for  him,  and  was  blurred 
in  some  strange  emotion,  in  which  the  glamorous  freshness  of 
child-feeling  mingled  with  a  leaping  of  the  heart  that  was  like 
the  spring-joy  of  the  swans. 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  49 

VI 

But  Jorrow  could  not  make  the  journey  that  day  to  that 
remote  farm.  There  were  more  important  animals  more  expen- 
sively endangered  and  more  easily  accessible.  Old  sows  were  so 
fussy,  and  to  judge  by  the  symptoms  it  was  a  mere  case  for 
castor-oil.  But  precisely  because  Jinny  had  herself  recom- 
mended this  drug-of-all-work  she  felt  unconvinced :  it  seemed  a 
mere  glib  formula  for  being  "  riddy  "  of  her.  There  was  another 
resource,  Elijah  Skindle,  who,  having  settled  in  Chipstone  only 
five  years  ago,  practised  only  among  parvenus  like  himself.  It 
was  not  because  he  was  a  "  furriner,"  nor  even  because  he  had 
started  as  a  knacker  and  still  had  a  nondescript  status,  that 
Jinny  shrank  from  calling  him  in  now :  she  had  more  than  once 
deposited  damaged  dogs  with  him  or  deported  them  mended.  But 
she  objected  to  the  appraising  gaze  he  fixed  upon  her  on  these 
occasions,  though  to  be  sure  her  objection  to  these  jaunts  was  not 
so  strong  as  Nip's,  who,  seeing  in  every  canine  co-occupant  of 
the  cart  a  possible  supplanter,  bristled  and  whined  and  barked  till 
the  rival  was  safely  discharged.  But,  on  her  way  home,  over- 
coming her  repugnance — for  Martha's  sake,  if  not  Maria's  or 
duty's — she  stopped  her  cart  outside  his  pretentious  black  gauze 
blind  and  blew  a  rousing  blast.  A  tall,  black-eyed,  grey-haired 
woman,  issuing  from  the  office  door  with  a  broom,  who  appeared 
to  be  Mr.  Skindle's  mother,  informed  her  that  'Lijah  was  "  full 
up  "  :  however,  he  could  be  found  at  the  kennels  if  Jinny  insisted 
on  seeing  him.  She  pointed  vaguely  to  a  field  behind  the  house, 
visible  through  an  unpaved  alley  yawning  between  the  sober 
Skindle  window  and  its  flamboyant  neighbour,  the  chemist's. 
But  it  was  in  vain  that  Jinny  clucked  to  Methusalem  to  thread 
the  alley.     The  beast  refused  absolutely. 

Alighting  with  some  dim  understanding  of  his  instinct,  she 
walked  to  the  field-gate  over  which  a  horse  was  gazing  at  her. 
Lifting  the  latch,  she  wandered  among  other  happily  scampering 
horses  in  search  of  the  kennels,  finding  at  first  only  a  barn-like 
structure,  a  glance  through  whose  doors  at  the  flagstoned  paving 
that  sloped  to  a  centre  -turned  her  sick.  For  a  pyramid  of 
horses'  feet  was  the  least  repulsive  indication,  though  even  the 
homely  skewers  so  agreeable  to  Squibs  took  on  a  sinister  hue. 
The  spectacle,  however,  served  to  make  the  kennels,  when  at 
last  discovered,  a  lesser  horror.     But  it  was  the  first  time  she 


50  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

had  seen  dogs  so  far  gone  in  distemper,  and  these  rheumy-eyed 
skeletons,  each  chained  in  its  niche,  sullied  the  springtide  and 
haunted  her  for  days.  She  caught  up  Nip,  who  had  come  to 
heel,  as  though  he  too  might  pine  suddenly  into  skin  and  bone. 
Nip  himself,  it  must  be  confessed,  regarded  these  shadows  of  his 
species  with  indifference,  if  not  with  satisfaction,  as  negligible 
competitors. 

Elijah  Skindle,  discovered  on  his  knees  in  the  act  of  feeding  a 
pathetic  poodle,  was  as  unstrung  by  the  sight  of  Jinny  as  Jinny 
by  the  sight  of  the  dogs.  His  black  cutty  pipe  fell  from  his  lips 
and  he  nearly  stuck  the  dog's  spoon  into  his  own  open  mouth. 
But  mastering  himself,  and  without  raising  his  cap  or  his  pipe 
or  changing  his  attitude,  he  gasped  out :   "  Hullo  !     Nip  ill  ?  " 

Jinny  replied  curtly — for  there  was  a  familiarity  that  repelled 
her  in  his  calling  Nip  by  his  right  name — ,"  No,  a  sow  at  Frog 
Farm — Little  Bradmarsh,  you  know." 

His  heart  leapt.  Frog  Farm  meant  an  old  inhabitant,  local 
prejudice  was  then  beginning  to  melt  at  last !  But,  "  Rather 
out  of  my  radius,"  he  said  with  pretended  indifference.  "  Be- 
sides," as  he  reached  for  his  pipe,  "  my  nag's  gone  lame." 

"  I  could  give  you  a  lift,"  said  Jinny,  outwitted  for  once,  since 
it  never  struck  her  that  this  was  precisely  what  Elijah  had 
fished  for  and  why  he  had  lamed  his  beast.  The  spoon  trembled 
in  his  hand,  but  he  replied  grumblingly,  "  But  then  I  should 
have  to  come  at  once." 

"  I'm  afraid  so,"  said  Jinny. 

Mr.  Skindle  rose  and  brushed  his  knees.  "  Anything  to  oblige 
a  lady,"  he  said. 

"  It  isn't  me,  it's  Maria,"  said  Jinny  icily. 


VII 

But  Jinny  was  not  altogether  outmanoeuvred,  for  while  Mr. 
Skindle  was  getting  his  case  of  utensils,  she  filled  up  the  rest  of 
her  seat — it  was  a  stuffed  seat  covered  with  sacking — by  means 
of  a  peculiarly  precious  parcel,  needing  a  vigilant  eye :  no  new 
device  this,  but  her  habitual  protection  against  bores  or  adorers, 
and  Skindle,  she  feared,  was  both.  This  swain-chaser  or  maid- 
protector  was  kept  in  a  corner  of  the  cart  ready  for  emergencies, 
being  an  elongated  package  of  stones,  marked  "  Fragile."  The 
stones  had  to  be  jagged  and  uncouth  or  Nip  would  have  squatted 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  51 

on  it  and  roused  suspicion.  This  was  the  only  parcel  she  lifted 
herself,  and  it  figured  in  her  own  mind  as  "  The  Scarecrow." 

And  so,  despite  Mr.  Skindle's  offer  to  nurse  it  on  his  knees, 
she  put  him  behind  her — not  as  a  Satan,  for  his  seductiveness  was 
small.  He  had,  it  is  true,  a  good  styside  manner,  and  his  slim 
figure,  outlined  by  a  trimly  cut  pepper-and-salt  suit,  effused  a 
sense  of  vitality.  But  his  straw-coloured  moustache,  which  was 
not  without  its  female  votaries,  was  for  Jinny  more  of  a  puzzle 
than  a  decoration,  for  she  could  not  reconcile  its  flowingness  with 
the  desolating  baldness  that  any  shifting  of  his  cap  revealed.  His 
cranium  was,  in  fact,  like  the  advertisement  of  a  hair-restorer  in 
the  picture  preceding  the  application  thereof.  As  fixed  a  feature 
of  his  face  as  the  grey  cap  which  concealed  his  calvity  was  the 
black  cutty  pipe  stuck  in  his  stained  teeth,  nor  had  Jinny  ever 
seen  him  without  a  large  pearl  horseshoe  pin  in  his  tie. 

"  Please  don't  smoke,"  she  said,  as  he  climbed  in  by  the  tail- 
board, "  Gran'fer  would  smell  it." 

"  And  why  shouldn't  he  ?  " 

"  He's  a  Wesleyan." 

"  Oh  !  "  He  laughed  without  comprehension,  a  shade  scoff- 
ingly. 

"  And  the  smell  might  get  into  people's  parcels,"  she  added. 

Bestowing  himself  under  the  tilt  as  well  as  he  could  on  a  box, 
grazed  at  his  side  by  a  ledge  he  considered  too  narrow  to  sit  on,  and 
threatened  with  decapitation  through  a  plank  holding  the  smaller 
parcels  that  ran  athwart  the  cart  just  above  his  head,  Mr.  Skindle 
gazed  up  over  this  shelf  at  the  glorious  view  of  the  back  of 
Jinny's  bonnet  and  feasted  his  eyes  on  her  graceful  dorsal  curves 
and  the  more  variegated  motions  of  her  driving  arm,  not  to 
mention  the  succession  of  lovely  rural  backgrounds  made  for  her 
figure  by  the  arch  of  the  awning.  And  his  ill-humour  melted, 
and  though  his  pipe  grew  cold  his  heart  began  to  glow.  But 
Jinny  took  no  more  notice  of  him  than  if  he  had  been  himself  a 
box.  No  wonder  he  began  to  feel  closed  and  corded  up,  bursting 
though  he  knew  himself  to  be  with  soul-riches.  For  a  full  mile, 
his  extinct  pipe  in  his  teeth,  he  heard  only  the  monotonous  snap 
of  Methusalem's  hoofs  as  if  everything  along  the  road  was 
snapping  in  a  frost.  The  unjaded  steed  had  actually  started  off 
at  almost  a  trot,  and  as  the  Gaffer  explained  once,  "  a  boss  what 
has  long  lopes  knocks  his  fitten  together."  Then — as  if  to  mark 
how  completely  her  passenger  was  forgotten — one  of  her  grand- 


^2  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

father's  songs  began  to  steal  from  her  lips.  It  was  not  "  High 
Barbary  "  nor  "  Admiral  Benbow,"  nor  yet  his  favourite  "  Oi'm 
seventeen  come  Sunday,"  which  the  nonagenarian  sang  daily 
with  growing  conviction.  It  was — and  Nip  would  have  been 
the  first  to  be  surprised,  had  he  understood  it — the  old  English 
air  : 

The  hunt  is  up,  the  hunt  is  up,  and  it  is  wellnigh  day, 

And  Harry  our  King  has  gone  huntynge,  to  bring  the  deer  to  hay. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  influence  of  her  horn  ;  perhaps  she  was  an 
artist  who  could  enjoy  in  song  what  she  could  not  suffer  in  life. 
Or  perhaps  she  loved  the  lilt  of  the  old  song  and  never  thought 
of  the  meaning,  or  only  of  the  bravery  of  the  spectacle  and  the 
gay  coming  of  the  dawn.  For,  all  untrained  as  she  was,  she 
vibrated  peculiarly  to  music,  and  one  of  the  wonderful  moments 
of  her  young  life  was  when  she  first  heard  a  hymn  sung  in  parts 
at  the  Sunday-school ;  to  her  ear,  accustomed  only  to  the  solo 
quavering  of  the  Gaffer,  was  revealed  harmony ;  a  starry  new 
universe  and  a  blood-tickling  enchantment  in  one. 

Almost  at  the  first  outbreak  of  the  hunting  song  Nip  appeared 
at  a  run,  and  with  two  bounds  he  established  himself  in  his 
mistress's  lap — invidiously  enough  in  Elijah's  eyes.  For  that 
silvery  little  voice,  rippling  along  the  lonely  road  with  the 
unconscious  joyance  of  a  blackbird's,  completed  the  spell  which 
the  spring  landscape — seen  in  that  series  of  pictures  framed  by 
the  arch  of  the  tilt — was  weaving  on  the  doomed  veterinary 
surgeon. 

There  were  sheep,  big  and  little,  lying  in  the  wide  fields  and 
great,  newly  ploughed  spaces  of  red,  freshly  turned  earth — for 
the  first  time  Elijah  felt  the  scarecrows  as  a  degradation  of  all 
this  primeval  beauty.  Apple-trees  flowered  in  the  cottage 
gardens  and  in  the  hedges  was  early  May-blossom,  and  on  the 
brinks  primroses,  anemones,  and  even  a  few  precocious  bluebells 
rioted  in  an  intoxicating  fertility  of  beauty.  Larks  rose  palpitat- 
ing with  song,  bumble-bees  boomed,  butterflies  flittered,  and 
ever  and  anon  came  the  haunting  cry  of  the  cuckoo.  And  when 
Jinny's  voice  soared  up  too,  Elijah  Skindle's  heart  seemed  melting 
down  his  spine. 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  S3 

VIII 

"  That's  a  lucky  dog  of  yours,"  he  said  desperately,  when  the 
music  ceased. 

"  That's  what  I  thought  at  your  place,"  she  replied  through 
the  back  of  her  head. 

"  Not  had  distemper  yet  ?  " 

He  saw  her  shoulders  shudder.     There  was  an  awkward  silence. 

"  You  know  I'd  gladly  look  after  him  gratis,"  he  blundered  on, 
"  and  you  too."  Then,  in  a  horrible  consciousness  of  the  patho- 
logical implication,  he  awaited  the  lash  of  her  tongue. 

But  she  must  have  been  abstracted.  For  she  only  said 
politely  :   "  TPianks  very  much.     But  I  always  go  to  Jorrow's." 

Yes,  he  reflected  bitterly,  and  always  went  there  for  other 
people  unless  Skindle's  was  expressly  stipulated. 

But  they  were  now  approaching  the  first  village  after  Chipstone, 
and  the  outside  world  intruded  on  the  idyll.  A  dozen  times  he 
vaulted  up  and  down  to  prevent  interloping  young  men — some- 
times armed  with  nosegays — receiving  parcels  too  proximately  ; 
and  he  had  a  proud  and  malicious  pleasure  in  their  disconcerted 
unspoken  surmise  as  to  his  privileged  situation.  The  small  coin 
of  conversation  appertaining  to  these  deliveries  Jinny  did  not 
refuse  him,  and  every  cluck  she  gave  to  Methusalem,  every  ripple 
of  laughter  on  her  busy  way,  deepened  the  spell.  The  unexpected 
faces  ;  the  quaint  cottage  interiors  ;  the  cheerful-smiling  women 
in  high  green  aprons  who  received  stay-laces  or  bobbins,  sugar  or 
tea-packets,  in  bare  dough-powdered  or  soap-frothed  arms  ;  the 
panting  figures  that  toiled  after  the  cart  with  forgotten  bundles  ; 
the  dogs — the  fiercer  in  their  barrels  and  boxes,  the  milder 
waving  free  and  friendly  tails ;  the  quaint  commissions  and 
monitions,  the  salutations  and  farewells — "  I'll  remember  the 
twopence,"  "  And  tell  my  brother,  won't  you,  about  the  christen- 
ing," "  I  don't  want  any  more  of  her  puddings,  they  put  the 
miller's  eye  out  " — all  this  fascinating  bustle  and  chatter,  spiced 
with  friendly  laughter,  seemed  to  belong  to  an  enchanted  earth 
of  which  gaiety  was  the  ground-note,  not  animal  groaning.  The 
windings  of  her  horn  completed  his  sense  of  fairyland. 

In  the  remoter  woodland  regions  he  was  possessed  alternately 
with  a  disapprobation  of  her  recklessness  in  trusting  herself  thus 
alone  with  a  male,  far  from  help,  and  a  surprise  at  his  own 
passivity  in  so  provoking  and  romantic  a  situation.     Of  course  he 


54  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  going  to  behave  like  the  gentleman  he  was,  but  why  was  she  so 
irritatingly  sure  of  it  ?  Did  she  think  he  wasn't  flesh  and  blood  ? 
She  might  at  least  show  some  consciousness  of  his  chivalry  1 

But  his  resentment  at  her  professional  nonchalance  only 
served  to  confirm  his  long-standing  suspicion  that  here  at  last 
was  the  girl  for  him  :  that  he  was  choosing  well  if  not  wisely. 
Doubtless  Chipstone  and  his  mother  would  say  he  was  marrying 
too  much  beneath  him.  But  look  at  the  farmers'  daughters — 
what  lumps  beside  her !  He  admitted,  of  course,  that  the 
Blanche  of  Foxearth  Farm  to  whom  his  mother  mainly  aspired 
was  an  exception,  but  then  this  Purley  minx  was  hopelessly  out 
of  reach,  stuck  up  on  her  pedestal  of  beauty,  conceit,  and  culture, 
and  throwing  over  even  her  affianced  wooers.  As  for  his  neigh- 
bour, the  chemist's  girl — what  could  his  mother  see  in  her  except 
that  annuity  which  would  not  even  survive  her,  and  she  not 
looking  particularly  strong  !  No,  with  the  present  satisfactory 
amount  of  sheep-rot,  glanders,  and  distemper  he  could  afford  to 
please  himself.  And  if  Jinny  couldn't  play  the  piano  like  the 
land-surveyor's  widow,  why  one  must  content  oneself  with  the 
horn,  pending  initiation  into  the  higher  life.  Together  they 
would  work  up  the  business.  With  Jinny's  connexion — though 
of  course  she  must  give  up  carrying  and  become  a  lady — there 
would  surely  be  a  trail  of  sick  beasts  in  her  wake :  Jorrow  would 
soon  be  out-distanced.  They  would  live  away  from  his  office  ; 
that  could  all  be  turned  into  dog-hospital. 

Such  were  the  kennels  in  the  air  built  by  the  enamoured 
Elijah  as  he  sat  on  boxes  or  hampers  or  panted  under  their 
weight  in  his  officious  deliveries  :  an  officiousness  which  drove 
out  of  her  head  the  keg  of  oil  destined  for  Uckford  Manor. 

"  Oh,  dear  1  "  she  murmured  suddenly,  a  mile  later.^ 

Forcing  the  explanation  from  her,  he  cried  joyfully,  "  Let's  go 
back." 

Jinny  shook  her  head.  "  No  time,"  she  said,  and  flicked  at 
Methusalem. 

"  But  I  don't  mind  being  late." 

"  I'm  not  thinking  of  you — but  of  the  pig." 

"  Bother  the  pig." 

"  Is  that  the  way  you  study  your  patients  ?  " 

"  I've  got  better  things  to  study."  He  could  only  say  it  to 
her  back,  but  he  threw  enough  intensity  into  it  to  come  out  on 
the  other  side  of  her. 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  55 

"  Indeed  !  "  The  back  seemed  impenetrable.  "  You  going 
into  another  business  ?  " 

"  Why  ever  should  I  when  I'm  getting  on  so  famously — ten 
pound  a  week,  if  a  penny."  It  was  an  opportunity  made  to  his 
hand.  "  I  know,"  he  went'on,  as  the  back  remained  rigid,  "  that 
folks  pretend  it's  not  as  high-class  as  real  doctoring,  but  believe 
me  it  needs  more  brains." 

"  Does  it  ?  " 

"  Stands  to  reason.  A  human  being  can  tell  you  what  he  feels 
and  where  the  pain  lays,  but  with  a  dumb  beast  you've  got  only 
your  own  sense  and  skill  to  go  on  :  it's  us  vets  that  should  really 
be  at  the  top  of  the  profession." 

"  But  sick  babies  are  dumb  too,"  Jinny  reminded  him. 

"  Sick  babies  have  talking  mammas,"  he  replied  genteelly. 

Jinny  did  not  imitate  them,  and  silence  fell  again,  tempered  by 
Methusalem's  snappings.  Really,  it  was  very  awkward,  EUjah 
felt,  thus  proposing  to  a  girl  behind  her  back.  But  he  struggled 
gallantly.  "  Take  stomach  staggers  now — if  those  horses  you 
saw  Waiting  to  be  killed  tlds  evening  had  been  treated  in 
time !  " 

"  The  horses  in  your  field  ?  "  cried  Jinny,  shocked.  "  But 
they  looked  so  lively." 

"  They're  all  like  that,"  he  explained.  "  Once  out  of  harness 
they  get  a  bit  jaunty  again,  but  they're  worth  more  dead  than 
alive." 

"  It's  dreadful  killing  off  a  horse  that  has  served  one  !  "  Jinny 
burst  out.     "  Just  for  a  few  shillings  !  " 

"  A  few  shillings  ?  Why  there's  horses  over  two-fifty  pounds  ! 
Flesh,  I  mean,"  he  explained,  with  a  chuckle.  "  Not  to  mention 
the  skin,  hair  and  bones.  "  Why,  there's  eighty  pounds  of 
intestines  for  sausage-skins  !  " 

"  Oh,  do  hold  your  tongue  !  "  cried  Jinny,  feeling  sick  again. 

"  Yes,  and  what  about  his  tongue ! "  retorted  Elijah  tri- 
umphantly. "  It  ain't  only  Frenchies  that  get  that.  And  his 
tail  waving  for  funerals  !  And  his  hoofs  in  your  own  shoe- 
buttons  !  " 

Jinny  felt  indeed  as  though  hoofs  had  descended  on  her  feet, 
and  she  could  almost  have  sacrificed  Methusalem's  high-waving 
tail  to  adorn  her  passenger's  obsequies. 

"  My  neighbour,  the  chemist — ^he  buys  the  blood  !  "continued 
the  ghoulish  Elijah.     "He  makes  it  into " 


56  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

But  just  here  at  a  cross-road  Jinny's  horn  signalled  to  a  smart 
young  man  in  a  velvet  waistcoat,  who  was  driving  a  trap,  and 
brought  him  to  a  standstill.  Would  Barnaby  deliver  a  keg  of 
oil  at  Uckford  Manor  if  he  was  passing  that  way  ? 

That  Manor  was,  it  transpired,  the  one  goal  and  purpose  of 
Barnaby's  journey. 

Jinny — well  aware  young  Purley  was  homeward  bound  for 
Foxearth  Farm — gave  him  a  radiant  smile,  and  Elijah  threw  him 
the  keg  and  a  furious  look,  a  reliable  fellow-feeling  informing 
him  that  the  velvety  liar  was  going  at  least  two  miles  out  of  his 
way.  Downright  dishonest  he  felt  it,  seeing  that  neither  the 
young  man's  time  nor  his  trap  was  his  own,  but  belonged  to  his 
father,  the  hurdle-maker.  But  what  could  you  expect  of 
Blanche's  brother  ? ,  Let  Jinny  beware  of  the  family  fickleness^ 
let  her  lean  on  a  less  showy  but  manlier  breast. 

"  I  wonder  you  don't  arrange  your  things  village  by  village 
instead  of  letting  'em  lay  all  over  the  vehicle,"  he  observed  as 
she  drove  on. 

"  I  shan't  forget  where  to  drop  you,"  came  the  answer  over 
her  cold  shoulder. 

Then  silence  fell  more  painfully  than  ever,  and  the  monotonous 
tick-tack  of  Methusalem  maddened  his  conscious  ear.  The  mon- 
strous possibility  began  to  loom  up  that  Jinny's  affections  were 
pre-engaged  to  some  one  of  these  numerous  young  men.  His 
eye  fell  upon  a  coil  of  rope  hung  round  a  loose  hoop  of  the  tilt, 
and  morbid  thoughts  of  using  it — whether  on  the  young  men  or 
himself  was  not  clear — floated  vaguely  in  his  usually  serene  soul. 
Presently  he  noted  other  coils  on  other  ribs,  and  their  plurality 
suggested  it  was  for  the  young  men,  not  himself,  that  rope  was 
appropriate.  What  else  were  they  there  for^  he  wondered  dully  ? 
Yes,  let  her  fiances  go  hang :  engagements  could  always  be 
broken  off — nothing  venture,  nothing  have  ! 

To  nerve  himself  for  the  great  question  he  took  advantage  of 
the  pause  at  Long  Bradmarsh  while  Methusalem  was  drinking 
at  the  trough  of  "  The  King  of  Prussia."  But  this  imitation  of 
Methusalem  on  a  stronger  fluid  was  fatal,  for  in  Jinny's  persistent 
silence,  the  animal's  tick-tacks  now  grew  soothing :  he  settled 
himself  more  comfortably  on  the  emptier  floor  of  the  cart,  with 
his  head  on  a  soft  bundle,  and  watched  the  nape  of  Jinny's  neck 
till  it  faded  into  a  great  white  sea  of  floating  ice.  He  was 
struggling  in  it  for  hours,  but  at  last  the  cold  waves  passed  over 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  57 

his  head,  and  Jinny,  turning  to  throw  out  a  parcel,  saw  that  his 
cap  had  fallen  off  in  his  writhings,  leaving  his  baldness  almost 
indecently  glaring. 

So  deep  was  he  in  his  daymare  that  he  was  quite  unaware  of 
Jinny's  colloquy  with  another  male  whom  her  horn  had  hailed 
as  they  passed  over  the  bridge  to  Little  Bradmarsh.  Not  that 
there  was  anything  in  Ephraim  Bidlake  to  excite  apprehension, 
for  he  was  a  stalwart  Peculiar,  safely  married,  and  residing  with 
his  family  and  two  twin-nieces  of  his  wife's — Sophy  and  Sally — • 
on  board  the  billyboy  whose  great  boomless  black  sail  Jinny  had 
espied  darkening  the  water  with  its  shadow.  Bidlake's  barge 
was  a  cross  between  a  Norfolk  wherry  and  a  ferry-boat,  and 
plied  up  and  down  the  Brad,  loading  at  the  wharves  with  its 
half-lowered  mast  for  crane,  or  carrying  man  and  cattle  across 
the  bridgeless  sections  when  it  had  nothing  better  to  do.  There 
was  not  much  money  coming  in  at  the  best,  and  it  was  often 
Jinny's  privilege  to  eke  out  the  barge's  larder  under  pretence  of 
presents  for  the  motherless  Sophy  and  Sally,  so  tragically 
fathered.  For  Ephraim  Bidlake,  a  shaggy  giant  with  doglike 
eyes,  had  brought  the  "  little  furriners  "  from  Hampshire  when 
their  mother  died  after  their  father — ^Mrs.  Bidlake's  brother — 
had  been  transported  to  Botany  Bay  for  burning  a  rick  in  some 
old  agricultural  riot  against  the  introduction  of  machinery.  The 
blot  on  their  scutcheon  had  been  concealed  from  the  new  neigh- 
bourhood, but  had  been  gradually  confided  by  Mrs.  Bidlake  to 
Jinny  with  protestations  of  her  brother's  innocence — had  he  not 
been  made  a  constable  in  the  very  convict  ship  ?  By  degrees, 
too,  she  had  conveyed  to  the  girl  a  vivid  picture  of  the  trial  and 
^  deportation.  For  the  devoted  sister  had  walked  the  bulk  of  the 
way  to  Winchester,  in  the  hope  of  proving  his  innocence  by 
collecting  testimonies  to  his  character,  and  had  joined  the  mob 
of  weeping  women  who  hung  round  the  gaol  gates  night  and  day, 
or  crowded  the  court,  only  to  witness  the  sanctimonious  cruelty 
of  the  bewigged  judges,  and  the  tragic  exodus  of  the  damned  in 
the  prison  coach,  guarded  by  a  file  of  soldiers,  to  lie  in  the  hulks 
at  Southampton  till  they  were  shipped  to  savage  Australia,  there 
to  be  assigned  to  brutal  stockowners.  It  was  an  experience 
which  had  cost  Mrs.  Bidlake  dear ;  her  next  child  had  been 
stillborn,  and  to  this  day  she  had  never  reared  but  one  more 
infant,  and  that  a  still  delicate  one.  But  for  the  comfort  of  the 
Peculiar  faith  it  would  have  been   a  cheerless  household.     She 


58  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  now  again  brought  to  bed  :  it  was  to  inquire  about  her 
that  Jinny  had  hailed  the  barge,  and  very  sad  she  was  to  learn 
from  Brother  Bidlake — when  he  had  punted  within  earshot — 
that  the  new  baby  had  succumbed  after  a  few  hours,  though  the 
"  missus,"  thank  God,  was  recovering  and  the  twins  were 
"  wunnerful  good  and  helpful."  She  was  not  sorry,  however, 
that  the  undoctored  infant  had  departed  with  a  precipitation 
which  rendered  an  inquest  unlikely,  for  inquests  were  the  bane 
of  the  Brotherhood. 

IX 

It  was  twilight  when  Methusalem  drew  up  again  before  the 
twin  doors.     This  time  Caleb  did  not  fail. 

"  Sow  glad  you  ain't  brought  the  wet !  " 

"  But  I  have — ^he's  snoring  inside,"  Jinny  called  down. 

"  Lord  !  "  said  Caleb,  taking  another  look.  "  Oi  did  see  his 
head,  but  by  this  owl-light  Oi  thought  'twas  a  cheese." 

Jinny's  laugh  rippled  out  and  Elijah  Skindle  started  up  and 
sneezed.     He  looked  round  dazedly  for  his  cap. 

•'  We've  arrived  ?  "  he  asked  shamefacedly,  clapping  it  on. 

''  Yes,"  said  Jinny,  "  but  the  pig's  all  right.  I  fear  you've  had 
a  wasted  journey."     She  jumped  down. 

"  Wasted  ?  "     He  sat  up  ardently.     "  Don't  say  wasted." 

"'  A  good  nap  is  a  comfort,"  she  agreed. 

"  I  may  have  dozed  off — your  singing  rocked  me  to  sleep,  I 

reckon.     But  all  the  while   I've  been  trying  to  tell  you " 

His  voice  broke. 

"  I  know,"  she  said  softly.     "  I  heard  you." 

*'  Did  I  talk  in  my  sleep  ?  "  he  asked  innocently. 

"  Through  your  nose." 

He  winced  as  at  a  blow  on  it.  "  That's — that's  nature,"  he 
stammered :  "  I  don't  suppose  even  females  are  free  from 
snoring." 

"  Maria  isn't,"  observed  Jinny,  patting  Methusalem. 

Martha  hurried  out  happily,  with  a  piece  of  sugar  for  the  same 
favoured  beast. 

"  Maria's  been  walking  with  me  !  "  she  cried  rapturously. 

"  And  eating  hearty,"  added  Caleb.  "  If  you  ask  me,  she  was 
drunk." 

"  Oh,  Fiynt !  "  cried  Martha.  "  Aren't  you  ashamed  to  speak 
like  that  about  your  own  pig ;   and  before  strangers  ?  " 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  59 

"  But  that  rolled  and  kicked  last  night  same  as  a  sow  Oi  seen 
once  that  swallowed  a  thick  wine.  Happen  Maria  got  swillin' 
at  old  Peartree's  beer-barrel !  " 

"  How  could  she  do  that  ?  "  Jinny  protested. 

"  Turned  on  the  tap  like  a  Christian.  Same  as  your  Methu- 
salem  opens  our  gate." 

Elijah  picked  up  his  pipe  and  his  cap  and  scrambled  down. 
"  Appears    to    me    I've   been    brought    here    under    false    pre- 


tences." 


"  We'll  pay  you  all  the  same,"  said  Caleb  with  dignity. 

"  But  how  am  I  to  get  back  to  Chipstone-  ?  "  He  had  followed 
Maria  in  reckless  abandonment,  and  now  came  the  prose  of  life 
with  its  questions. 

"  If  we're  going  to  pay  the  gentleman,"  put  in  Martha,  "  he 
may  as  well  have  a  look  at  Maria." 

Mr.  Skindle  agreed  it  was  as  well  to  make  a  possible  future 
patient's  acquaintance,  but  repeated  his  inquiry. 

"  There's  Shanks's  mare,"  said  Jinny  blandly. 

Caleb  pointed  towards  the  brook.  "  It's  onny  seven  miles  by 
Swash  End  through  Plashy  Walk." 

"  Plashy  Hall  has  a  dog,"  objected  Elijah. 

"Well,  you're  used  to  dogs,"  said  Jinny. 

"  My  instrument-case  is  too  heavy.  You'll  have  to  give  me 
a  lift  to  your  house." 

"  With  pleasure,"  she  said.  "  But  Blackwater  Hall  is  still 
farther  from  Chipstone." 

"  Anyhow  I  can  get  a  trap  from  the  village,"  he  said  firmly. 

"  No,  you  can't,  and  even  if  you  walk  to  Long  Bradmarsh  it's 
a  toss-up  if  you'll  get  anything  at  *  The  King  of  Prussia.'  " 

"  Well,  take  me  as  far  as  the  bridge — I'll  pay  extra." 

"  I  can't  guarantee  Methusalem  will  go  back." 

"  That's  all  right,"  he  said  cheerfully.  "  Horses  know  I  stand 
no  nonsense.  And  now.  Uncle,  as  soon  as  I've  lit  my  pipe,  I'll 
be  ready  for  the  pig.     Got  a  match  ?  " 

To  his  disgust,  Caleb  produced  a  lucifer  and  a  phial  of  sulphuric 
acid  for  dipping  it  in.  The  now  well-established  friction  matches 
— that  boon  to  the  idle  and  extravagant — had  not  yet  reached 
Frog  Farm,  where  even  flint  and  steel  had  been  dispossessed  but 
slowly.     But  the  relit  pipe  was  comforting. 

"  Wait  a  moment,  Mr.  Flynt,"  said  Jinny,  tendering  a  packet 
as  he  started  convoying  the  vet       "Your  neckerchief  !  " 


6o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Neckerchief ! "  cried  Martha.  "  And  what  about  my  new 
bonnet  ?  " 

"  'Twas  only  to  be  cleaned,"  Caleb  reminded  her.  "  And  by 
the  same  token,  mother,  don't  forget  we  settled  the  wet  was  to 
read  the  letter." 

Elijah  raised  his  eyebrows. 

"  i\h,  yes — rU  get  it."     And  Martha  hurried  within. 

"  You  see,  Jinny,"  Caleb  explained,  "  the  missus  got  a  letter 
from  Cousin  Caroline,  and  we  thought  the  gentleman  here  could 
make  one  job  of  it  with  the  pig." 

"  But  why  can't  I  read  it  ?  " 

"  You  ain't  married." 

"  No  more  is  Mr.  Skindle."     Elijah  flushed  furiously. 

"  Noa — but  ef  it's  too — too  womanish,  Oi'U  arx  him  kindly  to 
break  it  to  me,  sow  Oi  can  break  it  to  the  missus  when  he's  gone." 

"  Is  this  the  letter  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  as  Martha  reappeared 
with  it. 

"  That's  her — came  all  of  an  onplunge,"  he  repeated. 

"  But  that's  not  from  your  Cousin  Caroline  !  "  said  Jinny,  with 
a  thrill  of  excitement  as  she  took  it. 

"  Noa  ?  "  gasped  Caleb,  as  if  the  world  was  tumbling  about 
his  ears.  Then  he  smiled.  "  You're  making  game — you  ain't 
opened  her  yet." 

"  But  who  else  is  it  from  ?  "  cried  Martha,  catching  her  excite- 
ment. 

"  Can't  you  see  ?     It's  from  Will." 

"  Will !  "  Martha  gave  a  great  cry,  and  clutched  at  the 
letter.     "  My  baby  WiU  !  " 

Caleb  scratched  his  head.     "  Now  which  would  be  Will  ?  " 

"  Will  was  the  freckled,  good-looking  one,"  said  Jinny. 

"  Oh,  Jinny,"  said  Martha.  "  They  were  all  good-looking — 
took  after  Flynt.  Dear  heart,  you  can't  ha'  forgotten  our  tot  after 
all  that  flurry.     'Tis  only  seven  or  eight  years  since  he " 

"  Ay,  ay,"  cried  Caleb.    "  Him  what  mowed  the  cat's  whiskers." 

"  No,  dear  heart,  that  was  Ben." 

"  To  be  sure.  Ben's  the  barber  in  New  York — or  some  such 
place." 

"  No,  Caleb.     That's  Isaac." 

"  Isaac  ?  Then  Will  'ud  be  the  one  what  married  the  coffee- 
coloured  lady." 

"  I  told  you  the  other  day  that  was  Christopher." 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  6i 

"  Ay,  him  in  Australia." 

"  Africa  surely,"  put  in  Elijah,  puffing  at  his  pipe  with  superior 
amusement, 

"  They  furrin  places  be  much  of  a  muchness,"  said  Caleb. 
"  And  my  buoy-oys  were  as  like  as  a  baker's  dozen." 

"  There  were  girls  in  the  batch,"  corrected  Martha.  "  But 
how  you  can  forget  that  dreadful  Sunday  night,  you  who  snipped 
the  darling's  buttons !  " 

"  If  I  don't  see  the  pig  soon,"  interrupted  Elijah,  losing 
patience,  "  the  light'll  be  gone  altogether." 

"  Oi'U  git  a  lantern,"  said  Caleb  placidly.  "  Oi  often  used  to 
set  and  wonder  how  they  lads  knowed  theirselves,  the  one  from 
the  'tother.  Well,  the  Lord  bless  'em  all,  says  Oi,  wherever  they 
goo,  and  whichever  they  be.'^ 

"  So  you  see,"  said  Jinny,  with  a  faint  blush  hardly  visible  by 
owl-light,  "  there's  no  need  to  waste  Mr.  Skindle's  time  over  the 
letter." 

"  No  more  there  ain't !  "  said  Caleb  dazedly.  "  Come  along, 
sir !  " 

X 

But  Martha  still  clung  strangely  to  the  letter  she  had  snatched 
back.  "  You  mustn't  strain  your  eyes.  Jinny,"  she  said.  "  I'll 
light  the  lamp.  And  you'll  take  a  cup  of  tea  first.  You  must 
be  tired  out." 

"  But  I  can  see  quite  well,"  said'  Jinny.  Indeed  the  sky, 
despite  the  risen  moon,  remained  blue,  and  splashes  of  dying 
sunset  burned  magically  through  the  yet  empty  branches  of  the 
quiet  trees.  There  was  a  great  sense  of  space  and  peace  and 
beauty  :  a  subtle  waft  from  the  stacks  ;  the  note  of  the  thrush 
was  full  of  evening  restfulness.  Jinny  took  the  letter  from  the 
reluctant  Martha. 

"  He  must  be  back  in  England  !  "  she  cried.  "  Look  at  the 
stamp." 

Martha  staggered  against  the  cart.  "  It's  very  good  of  God," 
she  said  simply. 

Her  emotion  communicated  itself  to  Jinny.  Through  misty 
eyes  the  girl  watched  a  solitary  heron  winging  on  high  through 
the  great  spaces,  its  legs  sticking  out  like  a  tail. 

"  Ah,  dearie,"  said  Martha,  recovering  herself,  "  never  forget, 
to  say  your  prayers  '' 


62  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

''  I  don't,"  said  Jinny  -with  equal  simplicity.  But  she  remem- 
bered with  fresh  remorse  that  she  had  forgotten  those  for  the 
runaway. 

"  Ever  since  I  was  a  little  girl,"  said  Martha,  "  I've  wanted  to 
please  God.  But  of  late.  Jinny,  I  fear  I've  wanted  Him  to 
please  me." 

"  WeU,  now  He  has,"  said  Jinny.  "  You'll  have  Will  as  weU 
as  Maria,"  and  plucking  out  a  hairpin  she  inserted  it  to  rip  open 
the  loose  wafer-closed  envelope. 

"  Stop  !  "  cried  Martha.     "  Suppose  it's  bad  news." 

"  Nonsense,  Mrs.  Flynt !     Look  how  firm  the  writing  is." 

*'  Firm — ^yes,  he  always  was  firm — even  before  he  drove  off 
with  the  cart.  Don't  you  remember  that  night — no,  'twas 
before  your  grandfather  fetched  you  to  these  parts-r-he  wasn't 
seven,  but  that  pig-headed  he  sulked  in  the  wood  all  night — 
roosted  up  a  tree  like  a  bird,  and  never  a  move  or  a  word  when 
we  came  halloaing  with  torches  !  " 

"  Well,  he's  not  hiding  now,  for  the  postmark's  London 
and " 

"  No,  don't  open  it  yet,  Jinny — suppose  he  should  be  married 
like  Christopher  !  " 

Jinny  laughed  uneasily.  "  Two  black  daughters-in-law  aren't 
very  likely.     Much  more  likely  she'll  be  blonde." 

"  No,  he  can't  be  married,"  said  Martha  on  reflection.  "  He 
never  could  abide  girls.  I  don't  mean  you,  dearie  ;  you  scarcely 
had  your  second  teeth,  had  you  ?  " 

Jinny  began  to  rip  the  envelope.     "  We  shall  soon  see." 

But  Martha  snatched  away  the  letter  again.  "  I'm  sure 
you'll  spoil  your  pretty  eyes,"  she  persisted.  "  Day-stars,  Will 
called  'em  once." 

Jinny  laughed  still  more  uneasily.  "  Then  I  ought  to  be  able 
to  read  by  'em.  But  I'll  light  my  night-star."  And  she  moved 
towards  the  cart-lamp. 

"  It  isn't  your  lighting-up  time  yet,  is  it  ?  You  don't  want  to 
be  wasteful." 

"  Well,  come  in  and  light  me  a  candle  a  moment." 

"  You  seem  in  a  great  hurry  to  read  it !  "  said  Martha  fretfully. 

"  Me  ?  "  Jinny  flushed  furiously.  "  I  thought  you'd  want 
to  hear  what  he  says." 

"  Don't  I  know  what  he  says  ?  That  he  is  in  England  again 
and  coming  to  see  his  old  mother  ?  Isn't  that  enough  for  one 
night  ?  " 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  63 

"  It's  a  great  deal,  certainly.  But  suppose — he  wants  some- 
thing." 

"  Ah,  that's  true  !  "  Martha  was  visibly  perplexed.  She  did 
not  herself  understand  the  suddenly  awakened  jealous  instinct 
that  resented  Jinny's  superior  acquaintance  with  Will's  hand- 
writing, that  was  subconsciously  urging  her  to  hug  this  letter  to 
her  bosom  and  not  share  its  sacred  contents  with  a  girl  she  at 
last — especially  after  Bundock's  recent  innuendo — realized  as 
grown-up,  and  who  seemed,  moreover,  to  be  claiming  a  co- 
proprietorship.  And  so  it  was  difficult  for  her  to  frame  an 
objection  satisfactory  to  her  conscious  intelligence.  But  the 
letter  was  now  in  her  possession,  and  that  was  a  strong  asset  for 
her  subconsciousness. 

"  'Tis  a  pity  to  tear  open  such  a  beautiful  envelope,"  she  said. 
"  You  have  your  cup  o'  tea.     I'll  steam  it  over  the  kettle." 

"  I'm  afraid  I  haven't  time  for  tea,  especially  having  to  take 
Mr.  Skindle  a  bit  back,"  said  Jinny,  almost  as  mystified  as 
Martha  herself.  "  I'm  late  already,  and  Gran'fer  will  be  roaring 
for  his  supper.     I  must  read  it  now  or  never." 

"  If  it  was  anything  unpleasant,"  wavered  Martha,  "  Flynt 
would  be  very  upset.  And  after  sitting  up  all  night  with  Maria — 
no,  he  must  have  a  good  sleep — better  put  it  off  till  the  morning." 

"  To-morrow,  I  won't  be  here.     No,  not  till  next  Friday." 

"  But  I've  got  to  go  to-morrow  to  Miss  Gentry  and  she  can 
read  it." 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Jinny. 

"  Yes,  Flynt  wants  to  have  my  bonnet  cleaned — vanity  and 
waste,  I  call  it." 

"  But  won't  that  tire  you — such  a  long  walk  ?  Why  can't  I 
take  the  bonnet  to-night  ?     I'll  be  passing  her  house." 

"  We  haven't  finished  talking  it  over  yet,  Flynt  and  me," 
parried  Martha.  "  I  might  be  having  a  new  bonnet,  you  see, 
dearie." 

"  Well,  of  course,  it's  just  as  you  wish.     But  suppose  it  rains 


to-morrow." 


"  Rains  ?  "  repeated  Martha,  feeling — she  knew  not  why — like 
an  animal  at  bay.  Then  she  drew  a  great  breath  of  relief. 
Footsteps  and  voices  were  borne  towards  them.  "  Caleb  !  "  she 
cried  joyfully,  "  Will's  in  London — he's  coming  to  see  his  old 
mother." 

"  Good  buoy-oy  !  "  cried  Caleb  jovially.     It  was  only  what  he 


64  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

had  expected  the  letter  would  say,  but  at  heart  he  shrank  from 
the  change — he  had  finally  equated  himself  to  the  dual  solitude, 
and  the  home-coming  prodigal  loomed  as  menacing  as  Cousin 
Caroline. 

"  Good  boy  ?  "  echoed  Martha.  "  I  should  think  he  is — never 
cared  for  girls.     And  still  unmarried." 

"  There's  a  chance  for  you.  Jinny,"  chaffed  Caleb. 

"  Oh,  how  can  you  talk  such  nonsense  !  "  Jinny  was  furiously 
angry..  "  Basket,  Nip,"  she  called  sharply,  and  climbed  up  to 
her  seat  almost  as  swiftly  as  he  leapt  into  his. 

"  x4re  you  coming,  Mr.  Skindle  ?  "  In  her  abstraction  and  to 
busy  herself  about  something,  she  automatically  removed  the 
parcel  of  stones  from  the  driving-seat. 

"  In  a  jiffy."  Elijah  did  not  bound  as  obediently  as  Nip — ^he 
could  not  lose  the  chance  to  pontificate  before  her.  "  Not  at  all 
so  well  as  you  think,  Mrs,  Flynt.  We  experts  can  see  what  even 
the  breeder  can't.  Keep  her  upon  corn  and  peas — give  her  just 
soft  stuff."     And  he  vaulted  not  ungracefully  to  Jinny's  side. 

"  Thank  you,  sir,"  said  Martha,  impressed.  "  Have  you  paid 
him  ?  "  she  inquired  of  Caleb  in  a  formidable  whisper. 

"  Dedn't  Oi  say  Oi'd  pay  him  for  nawthen  ?  "  he  answered  still 
more  audibly. 

"  Well,  take  off  your  hat  for  good-bye." 

"  But  Oi  ain't  inside,"  said  the  obstinate,  if  confused, 
Caleb. 

Jinny  cracked  her  whip  fiercely,  and  Methusalem  joyously 
turned  his  nose  for  home. 

"  Good  night,  Jinny.  Thank'ee  for  reading  Cousin  Caroline's 
letter,"  Caleb  called  after  the  receding  vehicle. 


XI 

It  was  symptomatic  of  Jinny's  new^  mood  that  she  scarcely 
noticed  that  Mr.  Skindle  now  shared  her  sacking.  Her  mind  was 
wandering  again  over  the  ground  covered  by  the  Sunday-school 
wagon,  and  certain  birds'  eggs,  losing  their  later  cloud  of  guilti- 
ness, lay  suffused  with  childhood's  holy  light.  Methusalem  went 
unguided  through  quiet  ways.  The  large,  low  moon,  a  pink 
clown's  face,  peered  through  leafless  elms  and  gradually  grew 
golden.  To  the  right  of  the  winding  road  rooks  cawed  persis- 
tently, and  once  a  small  flight  flew  towards  the  cart ;   to  the  left 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  65 

more  melodious  birds  whistled  slow,  high  notes,  or  thrilled  and 
gurgled  plaintively,  or  scurried  off,  startled,  as  the  cart  passed. 
One  kept  on  crying  "  Quick,  quick,  quick,"  with  a  metallic  sound 
as  of  shears  snipping  the  grass,  but  Methusalem  was  not  to  be 
hurried.  There  was  time  to  admire  wherever  a  thatched  cottage 
made  a  picturesque  point  or  a  pond  mirrored  the  dying  sunset ; 
time  to  savour  the  subtle  balm,  where  hayricks  stood  at  the  far 
margin  of  fields.  Sometimes  a  little  pig  would  run  round 
terrified  and  finally  squeeze  itself  under  the  fence,  or  a  big 
gander  would  stand  and  hiss.  Sometimes  the  road  narrowed  to 
a  Gothic  nave,  but  for  the  most  part  there  was  nothing  but  a  far- 
diffused  sense  of  keen  air  and  great  flat  spaces,  the  dark  blue 
circle  of  sky  with  rolling  white  clouds,  the  large  green  fields  with 
their  distant  border  of  thin  trees  ;  a  view  unclosed  and  unbounded 
save  by  the  horizon,  though  impalpably  veiling  itself  as  they 
journeyed. 

Elijah   Skindle's   mood   had   changed   no   less    than    Jinny's. 
Though  he  now  sat  in  the  coveted  proximity  to  her,  and  could 
pr5pose  to  her  profile  instead  of  her  nape — and  her  bonnet  was 
of  the  narrow-flanked  pattern,  condemned  by  the  more  prudish 
of  her  sex,  that  left  the  profile  visible — he  was  subtly  conscious 
that  he  was  really  farther  from  her  than  before.     Even  when 
the  delivery  of  the  few  remaining  parcels  necessitated  a  slight 
thawing  on  Jinny's  part,  the  whole  spirit  seemed  to  have  gone 
out  of  the  adventure.     It  was  grown  tasteless  as  a  thrice-warmed 
dish.     The  very  horn  had  lost  its  thrill.     Even  if  he  found  a 
vehicle  at  "  The  King  of  Prussia,"  he  was  thinking,  it  would  be 
an   expensive   trip  :     they  might   charge  him   all   Caleb's  half- 
crown.     He  found  himself  morbidly  counting  the  coils  of  cord — 
there  were  five  in  all,  he  made  out.     And  when  the  rooks  he  called 
crows  sailed  towards  him,  they  gave  a  still  more  sable  hue  to  his 
thoughts.     He  counted  them,  too,  remembering  how  his  peasant 
mother — now  installed  as  his  woman-of-all-work — used  to  curtsy 
to  a  solitary  magpie,  and  the  rhyme  she  taught  him  about  the 
crows  :     "  One's  unlucky,   two  lucky,   three  is  health,   four  is 
wealth,  five  is  sickness,  and  six  is  death."     Odd  that  matrimony 
was  not  mentioned,  unless  it  was  included  in  "  two."     There 
were  certainly  five  crows,  he  thought  dismally — a  sinister  coinci- 
dence with  the  coils  of  cord.     Then,  cheering  up,  he  interpreted 
the  omened  sickness  as  that  of  the  local  live-stock,  a  sickness 
greater  than  Jorrow  could  cope  with,  and  he  reflected  that  after 

E 


66  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

all  Jinny's  was  a  hard  and  toilsome  life  and  her  frigidity  was 
perhaps  due  to  its  never  occurring  to  her  that  he  was  willing  to 
raise  her  to  his  status.  Perhaps  she  thought  he  was  just  itching 
to  take  liberties.  Well,  he  could  understand  her  coyness  :  other 
men  might  indeed  exploit  such  a  chance  ;  but  he,  he  assured 
himself  again,  was  a  gentleman. 

"  That's  a  slow  couple,"  he  said,  boldly  breaking  the  long 
silence. 

"  Seems  to  me  they  fly  as  fast  as  the  other  rooks,"  said 
Jinny. 

"  I  mean  the  Flynts,"  he  said. 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Jinny. 

There  was  resentment  in  her  tone.  She  had  not  liked  his 
calling  Caleb  "  Uncle,"  understanding  well  the  urban  contempt 
that  lurked  in  declaring  oneself  a  rustic's  nephew,  and  feeling, 
too,  that  however  slow  in  the  uptake  Caleb  might  be,  his  wealth 
of  homely  crafts,  knacks,  instincts,  life-wisdom,,  and  nature- 
knowledge  gave  him  a  richer  and  deeper  quality  than  this  pert 
townsman.     But  Elijah  persisted  in  his  urban  appraisal. 

"  No  go  in  them  I  " 

"  Dear  old  turtles  !  "  sighed  Jinny.  "  But  so  long  as  they  go 
at  the  same  pace !  " 

"  Ah  !  "  he  said  eagerly.     "  You  believe  in  like  to  like  ?  " 

"  Well,  fancy  a  turtle  married  to  a  hare  !  " 

"  But  a  pair  of  hares  now —  ?  "  He  seized  his  opportunity. 
"  You  and  me,  eh  ?  " 

"  Speak  for  yourself,  Mr. — Bunny  !  " 

"  I'm  paying  you  a  compliment.  Jinny,  classing  you  with  me 
for  smartness.  There  isn't  a  girl  from  Bradmarsh  to  Chipstone 
that  can  hold  a  candle  to  you.  So  that's  why,  seeing  a  man 
must  marry  somebody  sometime,  and  looking  around  as  becomes 
a  man  who's  getting  a  bit — a  bit " 

"  Bald  ?  "  prompted  Jinny  blandly. 

"  And  what  does  that  matter  ?  "  he  said,  too  intent  now  to  be 
fobbed  off  by  raillery.  "  The  point  is  that  with  the  practice  and 
position  I'm  getting  now,  it  would  be  a  good  lift  for  you." 

"  I  thought  I  was  giving  you  a  lift,"  said  Jinny  icily. 

"  So  you  were — so  you  are — ^in  that  sense.  But  I  didn't  need 
even  that.  My  nag  wasn't  really  lame.  I  only  made  an  excuse 
^o  talk  this  over.     See  ?  " 

''*  A  very  lame  excuse,"  flashed  Jinpy. 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  67 

■  •  "  There  was  never  any  way  of  talking  to  you — you  always  so 
busy  with  parcels  and  me  with  patients.  I'm  not  one  of  your 
flirting  kind  with  fancy  waistcoats,  I  want  to  settle  down,  and 
I've  taken  a  favour  to  you." 

Even  Jinny's  ready  tongue  had  no  repartee  to  this  massive 
complacency.     She  could  only  articulate  :   ^'  Have  you,  now  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  have.  And  I'd  like  to  see  you  driving  of  a  Sunday  in 
my  smart  trap.     Come,  what  do  you  say  ?  " 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said  coldly.  "  I'd  rather  stay  in  my  old 
cart." 

"  But  it's  such  a  shame — you  so  spruce  and  spry — tied  to  this 
ramshackle  cart,  when  you  might  be  adorning  a  higher  sphere 
and  sitting  in  mv  parlour  instead  of  being  at  everybody's  beck 
andcaU."- 

He  had  chosen  precisely  the  worst  form  of  appeal.  Confronted 
with  this  picture  of  parlour-stodginess,  her  role  of  Jinny  the 
Carrier — Jinny  the  pet  and  friend-in-need  of  the  countryside — 
seemed  infinitely  dear  and  desirable.  And  what  subtly  added  to 
her  anger  was  some  dim  presentiment  in  herself  of  other  forces 
coming  into  her  life,  forces  threatening  to  emerge  from  their 
picture-past,  and  to  trouble  the  placid  current  of  her  career. 
Like  Caleb  she  shrank  from  change.  To  shuttle  for  ever  'twixt 
Bradmarsh  and  Chipstone;  with  her  grandfather,  Nip,  Methu- 
salem,  all  immortal  and  unchanging  as  herself — this  was  all  she 
asked  of  heaven  :   this  and  not  too  much  rain  and  wind. 

"  You  want  me  to  sit  in  your  parlour  ?  "  she  cried  in  white 
revolt. 

He  took  off  his  cap  and  bowed  gallantly  :  "  In  silks  and  satins." 
Then  suddenly  realizing  his  baldness,  he  clapped  it  on  again. 

"  And  give  up  my  work  !  "  There  was  an  ominous  light  in 
Jinny's  eyes.  But  love  is  blind  !  Even  the  bats  now  beginning 
to  swoop  in  the  dusk  could  see  more  clearly  than  Elijah. 

"  I  promise  you  you  shan't  do  a  stroke  !  "  said  the  fatuous 
young  man.  "  As  the  wife  of  a  veterinary  surgeon,  you'd  be  a 
lady." 

"  And  what  would  become  of  Gran'fer  ?  " 

"  He'd  have  warm  corduroys  and  plenty  of  gruel  in  the 
Chipstone  poorhouse." 

"  You  heartless  knacker  !  Get  off  my  cart.  Whoa  !  Methu- 
salem,  whoa  !  " 

"  How  you  fly  at  a  man  !     I've  already  got  my  mother  living 


68  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

with  me,  and  she  and  your  grandfather  wouldn't  get  on,  being  of 
a  different  class.  But  I'd  be  willing  to  pay  his  rent  and  get  a 
woman  to  look  after  him." 

"  Nobody  shall  look  after  him  but  me.     And  his  business — who 
is  to  look  after  that  ?  " 

"  Don't  worry.     Some  other  carrier'U  crop  up." 
*'  There  isn't  going  to  be  any  other  carrier  here  but  Daniel 
Quarles,  understand  that." 

"  Well,  if  you  think  you'll  find  anybody  to  marry  your  grand- 
father  "  he  said  sullenly. 

"  Who  wants  to  marry  ?     I  shall  never  give  up  the  road." 
"  If  you're  so  fond  of  driving,  there's  always  my  trap." 
"  No  good  setting  traps  for  me.     I'll  hang  in  a  cage  in  no 
man's  parlour.     I  must  fly  about  in  the  woods  like  now — free  1  " 
"  Birds   in    the   woods    are   sometimes   hungry,"    her    wooer 
reminded  her.     "  Suppose  your  business  falls  off — or  things  go  to 
famine  prices  like  five  or  six  years  ago.     The  gallon  loaf  ain't 
always  a  shilling.     Ten  years  ago  I  remember  flour  was  two  and 
ten  the  stone,  and  that  only  seconds,  ^nd  tea  was  five  shillings. 
With  me  you'd  be  sure  of  the  fat  of  the  land  always — there's  no 
difference  with  me  'twixt  Sundays  and  weekdays." 
"  Oh,  it's  a  stuffed  bird  you  want  for  your  parlour." 
"  Rubbish,  I've  got  six  stuffed  birds  in  my  parlour — ^in  the 
loveliest  glass  cases  !  " 

"  But  they  don't  sing  !  "  And  Jinny  burst  mockingly  into  a 
song  that  had  hitherto  been  a  mere  tune  to  her  : 

"  /'//  be  no  submissive  wife^ 
No,  not  I " 

He  lost  his  temper.  "  Oh,  you  needn't  make  such  a  fuss  over 
yourself.  I  dare  say  I  can  find  plenty  of  wives — ^with  my 
connexion." 

"  Among  pigs  ?  "  she  said  sweetly.  She  jumped  down  and 
began  to  light  the  lamp.     "  This  is  your  getting-out  place." 

"  It's  nothing  of  the  sort — I  go  on  to  the  bridge." 

"  Impossible.     My  horse  is  lame." 

"  I  know  all  about  that."  And  snatching  up  the  reins  she  had 
dropped,  "  Gee-up  !  "  he  called  suddenly. 

But  Methusalem  knew  better. 

'"^  You'll  never  get  home  that  way,"  said  Jinny,  smiling. 

*'  Then  how  the  hell ?  "  he  began  furiously. 


JINNY  ON  HER  ROUNDS  69 

"  Shanks's  mare,"  she  reminded  him  again.  "  That's  not 
lame." 

He  gave  her  a  long,  nasty  look  as  though  meditating  the  law 
of  the  stronger.     But  he  tried  pleading  first. 

"  By  the  time-  I  walk  home,  my  mother'll  have  locked  up  ; 
thinking  I'm  sitting  up  with  a  patient." 

"  There's  the  poorhouse  !  " 

He  winced.  "  You've  got  to  carry  me,"  he  said  sullenly,  "  or 
I'll  have  the  law  on  you." 

"  There's  no  law  to  make  me  carry  aught  save  goods."  And 
she  sang  on  carelessly  : 

"  Should  a  humdrum  husband  say, 
That  at  home  I  ought  to  stay — - — " 

The  little  voice,  rippling  through  those  demure  lips,  wellnigh 
stung  him  to  close  her  mouth  with  the  masterful  gag  of  kisses, 
but  a  remnant  of  sanity  warned  him  not  to  spoil  a  fine  animal 
practice  by  a  scandal.  Besides  Jinny  had  her  whip,  and  what 
was  still  more  formidable,  her  horn. 

"  I'll  be  even  with  you  for  this  !  "  And  jumping  down,  he 
strode  off  furiously. 

"  Hullo  1     Mr.  Skindle  !     Hullo  !  " 

"  Keep  away  from  me  !  "  It  was  at  once  an  appeal  and  a 
warning. 

"  Don't  you  want  your  case  of  instruments  ?  Not  that  you'll 
be  in  time  to  kill  those  poor  horses  to-night." 

With  an  unsmothered  oath  he  turned  back  and  clambered  into 
the  interior,  upsetting  Nip's  basket  in  his  fury ;  the  result  of 
which  neglect  to  let  sleeping  dogs  lie  was  that  the  unsagacious 
animal  mounted  growling  guard  over  the  instrument-case,  as 
before  a  burglar. 

"  You'd  best  get  it  for  me,"  he  said  sullenly.  "  And  by  the 
way,  how  much  do  I  owe  you  ?  " 

"  Never  mind,"  she  said  blandly,  handing  him  his  burden. 
"  You  promised  to  be  even  with  me." 

"  The  little  vixen  !  "  he  thought,  as  he  trudged  towards  a  farm 
where  he  remembered  doctoring  a  horse.  "  She  ought  to  be  put 
in  the  ducking-pond  !     What  a  lucky  escape  !  " 


CHAPTER  III 

JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES 

I  remember  the  black  wharves  and  the  slips 

And  the  sea-tides  tossing  free^ 
And  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships 

And  the  magic  of  the  sea. 

Longfellow,  "  My  Lost  Youth." 

I 

Blackwater  Hall,  the  home  of  Daniel  Quarks  and  liis  grand- 
daughter, was  none  of  your  old  manor-houses  with  muUioned 
windows  and  carven  music-galleries,  fallen  in  grandeur  and  rent. 
It  had  barely  done  yeoman's  service,  being  just  a  low  white- 
washed and  thatched  cottage,  whose  upper  windows  under  the 
overhanging  eaves  seemed  deep-set  eyes  under  jutting  brows. 
Nor  was  it  near  the  Blackwater,  though  from  its  comparatively 
high  ground  the  broadening  river  first  began  to  glimmer  on  the 
view  when  you  came  to  the  edge  of  Bradmarsh  Common  and 
looked  across  its  brown  expanse  towards  the  bluish  haze  of  the 
background. 

It  was  in  reality  nearer  the  Brad,  which  as  seen  foreshortened 
from  it  seemed  to  lave  the  roof  of  Frog  Farm  and  sentinel  it  with 
its  willows.  Blackwater  Hall  should  in  fact — Jinny  would  jest — 
have  been  called  Common  Cottage.  For  it  was  just  a  way  of 
living  on  the  Common,  protected  from  the  elements,  yet  sucked 
up  into  them  :  a  sort  of  transparent,  transpirable  shell  amid  this 
universal  flying,  fluttering,  hopping,  creeping,  crawling,  soaring, 
swooping,  scampering,  twisting,  droning,  humming,  buzzing, 
barking,  chirping,  croaking,  cawing,  and  singing  :  a  human  nest 
niched  on  the  edge  of  a  chaos  of  twigs,  roots,  old  amorphous 
trunks,    tangled    faded    fern-branches,    mossy    patches,    gorse, 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  71 

ferruginous-leaved  oaks,  shrubs,  ant-heaps  innumerable,  rabbit- 
warrens,  wild  apple,  wild  plum,  black  heather,  and  endless  stubs 
to  catch  the  feet,  or  branches  to  whip  the  face,  or  thorns  to  prick 
the  fingers.  A  garden  path  to  the  Hall  lay  between  homely 
flowers,  periwinkle  and  marigold  and  the  like. 

Behind  the  Hall  lay  the  Quarles  estate  of  an  acre  and  a  lug  or 
two,  with  its  poultry-run,  its  tethered  goats,  its  vegetables,  its 
clothes-lines,  its  thatched  stables,  its  odd  sheds  and  little  barn, 
and  its  well.  If  Daniel  Quarles  was  not  nid-nodding  over  his  big 
Bible  or  on  the  bench  in  the  front  porch,  or  pruning  the  vine 
over  the  kitchen  door,  or  exercising  his  lopping  and  topping 
rights  on  the  Common,  it  was  here  the  nonagenarian  was  to  be 
found  pottering :  planting,  hoeing,  watering,  or  weeding.  He 
would  usually  groom  Methusalem  of  a  morning — it  was  his  way 
of  asserting  his  hold  over  the  business — and  on  Tuesday  and 
Friday  evenings,  when  the  wayworn  Jinny  drove  up  along  the 
grassy  path  'twixt  cottage  and  Common,  rutted  only  from  her 
own  wheels,  he  would  generally  rub  down  Methusalem  after  high 
tea.  Otherwise  the  multiform  labour  of  house  and  land,  of 
cooking  and  bread-baking  and  goat-milking  and  scrubbing  and 
washing,  all  fell  upon  the  little  Carrier.  And  even  the  work  the 
Gaffer  did  was  far  outbalanced  by  the  work  he  made. 

And  yet  it  was  Daniel's  personality,  not  Jinny's,  that  was 
impressed  on  the  house,  even  as  his  name  remained  on  the  cart. 
Her  own  exiguous  claim  upon  life  combined  with  piety  and 
affection  to  leave  everything  as  she  had  found  it  when  he  brought 
her  here  ;  not  only  in  the  big  attic  where  eight  had  once  huddled 
and  which  he  now  occupied  in  solitary  state,  sadly  conscious  of 
the  great,  snoreless  silences,  but  in  both  the  ground-floor  rooms 
over  which  it  stretched.  The  one  with  the  window  was  the 
living-room,  and  the  other — on  which  the  front  door  opened 
and  where  a  Dutch  clock  with  hanging  weights  greeted  the 
visitor  with  a  cheery  tick  that  relieved  its  deadness — was  piled 
pell-mell  with  old  cypress  chests  and  other  litter  of  the  progeny 
he  had  outlived,  as  well  as  with  a  few  boxes  or  parcels  left  by 
neighbouring  clients  or  as  yet  undelivered  to  them.  These  two 
rooms  communicating,  the  box-room  served  both  as  a  business 
office  and  a  passage  to  the  living-room,  from  the  rear  of  which 
you  ascended  by  a  door  the  wriggling  staircase  to  the  patriarch's 
big  bedroom,  or  tumbled  down  two  steps  from  another  doorway 
to  a  combination  of  kitchen,  larder,  wood-cellar,  and  scullery,  lit 


72  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

up  and  aired  by  one  small  swinging  pane,  a  den  which  even 
Jinny  could  not  keep  free  of  cobwebs  and  smells.  Here  was  the 
Gaffer's  beer-barrel,  and  the  thumb-hole  tray,  painted  with  tigers, 
on  which  she  brought  in  his  morning  draught  from  it.  Here  also 
were  the  jug  and  basin  of  her  toilette,  for  bedroom  Jinny  had 
none ;  the  need  of  disturbing  the  ancient  chests  or  the  office — 
which  would  have  been  a  sad  blow  to  her  grandfather — being 
avoided  through  the  fortunate  talent  of  the  chest  of  drawers  in 
the  living-room  for  turning  into  a  bed.  Its  drawers,  in  which 
the  bedding  was  concealed,  would  come  out  and  hook  on  to 
one  another,  while  legs  would  swivel  out  from  beneath  them. 

It  was  not  gay — this  room-of-all-work — despite  its  over- 
population of  china  shepherdesses  with  their  swains  and  hounds 
and  its  rank  growth  of  dried  grass  in  vases — all  doubled  and 
distorted  by  the  cracked,  fustily  gilt  mirror  on  the  mantelpiece — 
for  the  oaken  beams  of  the  ceiling,  from  which  hung  a  gigantic 
rusty  key,  had  been  plastered  over,  and  the  walls — ^in  a  similar 
quest  of  gentility — dulled  with  a  grey  paper,  sedulously  re- 
matched  when  it  fell  to  pieces  ;  far  livelier  was  the  staircase 
paper — all  hearts  and  roses — ^if  only  you  could  have  seen  it  in 
the  dusky  windings  and  under  the  menacing  bulge  of  the  plaster 
ceiling. 

Apart  from  the  shepherdesses  and  vases,  among  wliich  Jinny 
was  not  sorry  to  see  a  growing  mortality,  as  the  Gaffer  fumbled 
for  his  spectacles,  the  room  was  not  over-furnished,  a  small 
carved  wooden  settle  by  the  cavernous  hearth,  a  small  square, 
central  table  without  flaps,  two  squat  and  cushioned  arm-chairs, 
with  one  prim  wooden  chair,  and  a  little  lamp  with  a  monstrous 
fat  globe,  constituting  almost  the  minimum  of  necessaries  ;  even 
their  united  libraries,  the  Gaffer's  Family  Bible  and  Jinny's 
"  Peculiar  Hymn-Book  "  and  "  Universal  Spelling-Book, "  being 
constrained  to  repose,  like  the  shepherdesses,  on  top  of  the  chest 
of  drawers — that  shifty  piece  of  furniture  whose  mysterious 
recesses  secreted  also  the  hymn-book  recovered  from  the  bushes. 
That  article  of  bigotry  and  virtue,  hurled  from  him  by  the  angry 
boy,  lay — ^long-forgotten — in  the  top  drawer  behind  the  roUed-up 
wire  mattress  that  uncoiled  by  a  spring. 

Yet  this  shabby  room  with  its  drab  paper  and  squat  furniture 
— vivified  most  of  the  year  only  by  that  tireless  tick  of  the  Dutch 
clock  from  the  office,  or  the  purring  of  the  kettle  from  the  kitchen 
— made  for  Jinny  the  holy  conception  of  home.     The  very  cracks 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  73 

in  the  mirror  had  become  second  nature  ;  a  glass  that  looked 
one  squarely  in  the  face  would  have  put  her  eye  out,  and  if 
in  an  utterly  impossible  moment  the  Gaffer  had  considerately 
replaced  the  old  one,  the  tresses  she  tamed  into  seemliness  by  it 
would  have  been  a  sorry  sight.  Here,  without  books  or  friends, 
mere  living  was  a  happiness,  especially  at  night  after  Gran'fer, 
whose  big  Bible  invariably  turned  from  a  table-book  into  a 
pillow,  had  woke  up  and  remarked  he  was  getting  sleepy,  and 
been  steered  up  the  corkscrew  staircase  to  his  bed.  Then,  in  a 
silence  broken  by  no  human  sound — save  the  snoring  of  the 
Gaffer  from  above — and  in  a  security  symbolized  by  the  unlocked 
gates  and  doors.  Jinny  would  sit  in  delicious  relaxation  with  her 
sewing  or  knitting  or  bonnet-trimming,  finding  compensation  for 
the  long  laborious  day  :  listening  in  summer  to  the  late  singing 
birds  or  gazing  in  winter  at  the  glowing  logs  with  their  delicate 
flicker  of  blue,  while  Nip  in  his  virtuous  basket  snored  in  harmony 
with  the  Gaffer  or  uttered  joyous  yells  in  his  dream-hunting. 

In  those  hours  Jinny  demanded  nothing  of  man  or  God, 
though  when  she  had  produced  her  bed  like  a  conjurer  out  of  its 
mahogany  recesses,  prayers  came  automatically  to  the  sleepy 
little  figure  kneeling  beside  it,  with  the  dark  hair  flowing  over 
the  white  shoulders. 

That  was  a  pretty  sight,  but  only  the  cracked  mirror  saw  it. 


II 

Yet  back,  deep  .back  in  Jinny's  baby  consciousness,  lay 
another  home  altogether,  a  home  richer  in  comfort  and  love  ; 
giving  not  on  a  tumbling  common,  but  on  a  strange,  flat  water- 
side— with  stately  dream-ships  in  swelling  white,  and  black 
barges,  and  little  boats  with  ochre  or  orange  sails,  and  a  pervading 
savour  of  salt  and  mud ;  the  real  Blackwater  Hall  she  felt  dimly, 
though  its  name  escaped  her. 

In  this  overlaid  life  there  was  a  filmy  female  figure  that  fed 
and  bathed  and  rocked  one,  and  kissed  the  place  one  had  banged, 
and  sometimes  held  one  as  passionately  as  if  against  some  monster 
that  was  trying  to  tear  one's  face  from  that  flower-soft  cheek  ;  it 
could  scarcely  be  that  burly  figure,  spasmodically  appearing  and 
disappearing,  for  that  too  was  kind  in  its  different  way,  and  had 
a  knee  less  cumbered  by  clothes  across  which  one  could  ride 
astride,  and  pullable  hair  on  its  face  and  curling  smoke  issuing 


74  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

from  its  mouth  more  profusely  than  from  the  kettle's.  Out  of 
this  general  background,  like  mountains  from  a  plain,  stood  out 
a  few  episodes  of  peculiar  vividness,  but  of  no  apparent  signi- 
ficance— in  one  she  sat  on  a  rough  sea-wall  playing  with  innu- 
merable tiny  white  shells  while  a  bird,  hovered  over  her  crying, 
as  if  trying  to  induce  her  to  follow  it  seaward,  but  before  she 
could  do  so  the  female  figure  had  appeared,  frantically  scolding 
and  caressing,  and  had  carried  her,  struggling  and  kicking,  back 
to  a  cot.  In  another  she  was  carried  by  the  burly  being  to  a 
little  room  with  a  strange  little  bulbous  window  and  a  queer 
smell,  where  she  was  kissed  by  an  elderly  figure  with  a  cocked 
hat  and  a  fixed  eye  that  had  a  strange  afiinity  to  the  window. 
Later  she  seemed  to  be  living  in  the  strange  building  that  held 
this  room  :  it  had  a  canvas  roof,  a  flag  at  one  end  and  a  mast 
with  ropes  at  the  other,  yet  puzzlingly  was  not  a  ship,  for  she 
saw  herself  running  down  the  stairs  to  pat  Methusalem  in  the 
road. 

But  these  shadowy  and  usually  submerged  images  all  leapt 
into  renewed  vitality  one  delectable  Wednesday  when,  clad  in  a 
new  black  dress,  hurriedly  stitched  together  by  Miss  Gentry,  she 
divided  the  driving-board  with  her  grandfather  (looking  odd  in 
his  white  funeral  smock  beside  her  blackness),  while  Methusalem, 
equally  refreshed  and  exhilarated  by  the  novel  roads,  almost 
hurried  them  by  square-towered  hamlets  and  dear  little  bridges 
spanning  crawling  streams  to  the  quaint  cemetery  where  the  old 
man's  sister  was  to  lie.  How  Nip  would  have  loved  the  expedi- 
tion she  thought  in  after  days  !  But  he  Jbad  not  yet  adopted 
her. 

It  was  on  this  trip  that  she  began  to  hear  things  that  solidified 
the  filmy  figures — but  it  was  only  from  the  Gaffer's  spasms  of 
imprecation  tailing  off  into  anecdote  that  she  was  able  in  the 
course  of  years  to  piece  together  her  parental  history.  Boldero, 
she  learnt  incidentally,  was  her  real  name,  not  Quarles :  a 
correction  that  mattered  less,  since  nobody  had  ever  called  her 
anything  but  Jinny.  She  gathered  that  the  Gaffer  had  purposely 
neglected  to  perpetuate  her  father's  name  :  he  was  cancelled 
and  annulled. 

Roger  Boldero,  she  came  gradually  to  undei  stand,  was  one  of 
those  superior  souls  of  uncertain  status  who,  having  got  command 
of  a  little  sailing  vessel,  were  wafted  joyously  to  and  fro,  exchang- 
ing the  silks  and  spirits  of  France  and  the  tobacco  of  Holland 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  75 

for  the  coins  of  England  without  any  regard  for  the  benighted 
principles  handicapping  human  intercourse  by  taxation.  Al- 
though her  father  finally  came  to  own  the  cargoes  he  ran,  he  was 
at  first  the  mere  carrier  for  speculative  capitalists  ;  under  cover, 
moreover,  of  an  honest  freight  of  non-dutiable  articles.  Carrying 
was  thus  in  Jinny's  blood,  both  by  land  and  sea,  and  it  is  no 
marvel  she  made  a  success  of  it.  But  the  conjuncture  of  the  two 
bloods  came  by  the  queerest  of  accidents.  The  Tommy  Devil — the 
fearsome  name  of  Roger  Boldero's  boat  was  only  the  Essex  name 
for  the  swift  that  flew^  gigantically  in  gay  wood  over  its  cutwater 
— being  caught  one  night  in  a  sudden  gale  at  a  season  of  high 
tides,  found  herself  driven  towards  a  lee  shore  of  her  native 
county.  It  was  a  perilous  situation,  and  rather  than  be  dashed 
on  the  beach  broadside  on.  Skipper  Boldero  put  his  helm  up  and 
daringly  essayed  to  land  nose  first  on  the  mud.  But  the  lugger, 
whose  lightness  was  so  admirable  against  the  King's  cutters,  and 
which  had  been  still  further  lightened  of  her  ankers  of  brandy 
and  stone  bottles  of  Schiedam — these,  through  an  interruption 
by  the  blockade  men,  "  waiting  to  be  called  for "  in  certain 
"  fleets  "  and  ditches  farther  along  the  coast — could  not  keep 
her  head  against  the  veering  welter.  With  desperate  resource- 
fulness Boldero  improvised  a  drogue  by  lashing  spars  and  a 
spare  sail  to  a  rope  and  trailing  it  at  the  stern,  and,  thus  steadied 
before  the  wind,  the  Tommy  Devil  escaped  broaching  to,  and 
despite  the  following  sea  that  tilted  her  figurehead  into  the 
depths,  she  was  finally  dumped  high  and  wet  on  the  beach,  on 
the  very  verge  of  the  sea-wall — both  uninjured. 

It  was  a  fine  piece  of  seamanship  (though  aided  by  the  rare  steep- 
ness of  this  bit  of  beach  and  the  high  water),  and  the  storm  be- 
ginning to  abate  and  the  water  to  recede,  the  sails  were  lowered  and 
the  skipper  and  crew  turned  thankfully  in.  They  were  not  wanting 
in  men — carrying  of  this  kind  needed  large  and  able-minded 
crews — yet  all  hands  being  worn  out  by  hours  of  battling  with 
wind  and  wave — "  dilvered,"  as  old  Daniel  put  it — a  watch  was 
deemed  superfluous  for  a  vessel  no  longer  at  sea,  and  the  Tommy 
Devil  reposed  from  stem  to  stern  with  all  the  soundness  of 
conscious  virtue  watched  over  by  Providence. 

Now  it  happened  that  Lieutenant  Dap,  commander  of  His 
Majesty's  Revenue  Cutter,  then  prowling  in  the  ofling  in  quest 
of  gin-tubs — ^he  had  been  pressed  as  a  youth,  served  under 
Nelson,  and  had  exchanged  to  the  Preventive  Service  when  he 


76  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

married  that  rustic  beauty  Susannah  Quarles,  sister  of  Daniel — 
was  returning  with  a  lantern  at  the  first  peep  of  dawn  to  the 
*'  Leather  Bottel,"  to  knock  up  his  boat's  crew.  His  anxious  day 
in  Brandy  Hole  Creek — as  everybody  called  the  little  place — ^had 
ended  happily  :  Susannah's  seventh  baby  had  been  saf^y  and 
punctually  launched — and  the  proud  and  prolific  father  was 
anxious  to  be  back  sweeping  up  the  prizes  that  led  to  prefer- 
ment. It  being  a  high  occasion,  and  to  impress  Mrs.  Dap's 
neighbours,  he  had  come  ashore  in  a  cocked  hat,  and  he  felt 
almost  knocked  into  one  when  he  beheld,  towering  over  the  sea- 
wall, the  great  masts  of  a  vessel  that  loomed  gigantic  in  that 
place  and  light.  He  rubbed  his  one  eye — the  other  he  had  lost 
in  his  original  struggle  against  the  pressgang — but  the  mysterious 
jetsam  remained,  and  a  closer  inspection  showed  it  the  kind  of 
longish  craft  whose  huge  lugsails  his  clumsier  man-o'-war  could 
rarely  overtake,  despite  his  square  sail  yards.  But  boldly,  as 
befitted  a  man  with  a  Nelsonic  eye,  and  without  waiting  even  to 
summon  his  men,  he  hailed  the  stranded  stranger.  No  reply. 
Nor  did  even  a  shower  of  such  small  stones  as  the  muddy  beach 
afforded  have  any  effect  on  the  uncanny  bark.  There  was 
nothing  left  but  to  board  her — ^which  the  hero  achieved  single- 
handed,  clambering  over  the  sagging  bulwark  and  standing  alone 
on  the  slanting  deck. 

Roger  Boldero,  aroused  to  find  himself  challenged  by  the 
cocked  hat  and  stony  eye  of  the  Law,  displayed,  though  blinking 
at  the  lantern,  as  great  a  sang-froid  as  in  the  presence  of  the 
elements.  There  was,  in  fact,  far  less  danger.  Of  the  forbidden 
articles  only  lace  was  left  on  board,  and  lace  has  been  designed 
by  the  said  watchful  Providence  to  occupy  small  space  and  be 
easily  invisible.  A  wink  to  his  second  in  command,  and  two  of 
the  crew  who  were  in  excess  of  the  legal  number  for  that  small 
tonnage,  smuggled  themselves  overboard — here  being  one  of  the 
advantages  of  terra  jirma.  The  few  odd  kegs,  flagons,  and 
cigar-boxes  were  the  ship's  own  stores  Boldero  maintained,  and 
he  would  be  very  glad  if  the  "  Commodore  "  would  join  him  in 
sampling  them  now.  Softened  by  the  title,  the  bold  Dap 
nevertheless  declined  :   the  vessel  was  his  prize,  he  declared. 

"  And  what  is  to  prevent  us  taking  you  as  our  prize  ?  "  asked 
Roger  blandly,  having  by  now  discovered  that  Dap  was  alone. 

"  You  can't  move  an  inch,"  said  Dap. 

"  But  we  shall  float  off  as  soon  as  the  tide  rises." 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  77 

"  Precisely.  But  it  won't  come  as  high  again,  not  till  the  next 
spring  tide.  Meanwhiles  I've  a  gig's  crew  ashore  and  a  cutter 
within  gunshot." 

Boldero  was  taken  aback.  He  realized  that  he  was — in 
nautical  parlance — "  neaped."  What  a  miserable  misadventure  ! 
What  a  reward  for  his  seamanship  !  But,  masking  his  consterna- 
tion, he  rejoined  with  a  smile,  "  Then  you  can't  take  your  prize 
in  tow  either."  He  proceeded  to  point  out  laughingly  that  there 
was  no  question  of  capture  on  either  side,  that  there  was  not  a 
tittle  of  evidence  against  him,  that  he  was  an  honest  trader,  as 
his  manifest  and  cargo  would  show — and  that  even  if  His  Majesty, 
through  his  admirable  if  over-zealous  representative,  insisted  on 
taxing  his  own  little  modicum  of  alcohol  and  tobacco,  it  had  not 
been  technically  landed.  The  nice  point  whether  a  cargo  which 
lands  inside  its  ship  instead  of  outside  can  be  said  to  have  landed, 
side-tracked  the  question  of  the  status  of  the  ship  herself,  and 
entailed  so  great  a  consumption  of  the  cheroots  and  liquor — 
despite  the  unearthly  hour — that  their  fiscal  value  must  have 
been  considerably  reduced.  But  the  obdurate  Dap  still  insisting 
they  were  dutiable,  Roger  Boldero  invited  him  to  seal  them  up 
till  he  sailed,  as  he  had  certainly  no  intention  of  landing  them 
here.  He  pointed  out,  however,  that  though  the  tide,  like  Time, 
waited  for  no  man,  he  would  have  to  wait  for  the  tide  ;  and  that 
during  this  disagreeable  interval  the  hope  of  again  offering  the 
"  Commodore  "  the  cordial,  if  lop-sided,  hospitality  of  his  cabin 
must  disappear  if  the  fomenters  of  friendship  were  put  in  bond. 
Even  this  argument  might  have  shattered  itself  against  Dap's 
fuddled  sense  of  duty  had  not  the  twice  aforesaid  Providence 
now  sent  on  board  a  rival  cocked  hat  with  a  feather  salient.  With 
the  growing  light  the  local  exciseman — of  the  shoregoing  branch 
of  the  service — had  likewise  discovered  the  strange  quarry.  But 
the  gleam  in  the  hunter's  eye  died  when  Lieutenant  Dap  intro- 
duced him  to  his  friend  Boldero,  who  was  celebrating  with  him 
the  birth  of  his  seventh  baby,  and  whose  society  for  the  next 
month  would,  he  was  sure,  add  to  the  amenities  of  life  in  Brandy 
Hole  Creek. 

And  "  my  friend  Boldero "  did  not  fail  to  become  it,  for 
Lieutenant  Dap's  cruising  was  confined  to  the  waters  on  whose 
border  he  had  built  his  nest :  and  he  was  frequently  hove  to. 
And  during  those  tedious  four  weeks,  made  still  more  tedious  by 
rain,   Boldero  had  himself  rowed  out  more  than  once  to  the 


78  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Channel  groper "  whose  black  hull,  copious  white  boats, 
formidable  guns  and  flaming-flannelled  red-capped  crew  were 
plainly  visible  from  the  beached  lugger  ;  and  he  moved  genially 
among  the  blue-trousered  tars  and  did  full  justice  to  the  Lieu- 
tenant's gin-toddy  and  had  his  fingers  often  in  the  Lieutenant's 
snuff-box  and  lent  a  sympathetic  ear  to  his  methods  and  devices 
against  those  rascally  smugglers  with  their  manoeuvre  of  rowing 
dead  to  windward. 

Their  spirit-casks  were  slung  with  ropes,  the  Lieutenant 
explained,  so  that  their  confederates  on  shore  could  load  them 
easily  on  their  horses,  but  only  the  other  night  the  blockade-men 
had  discomfited  a  formidable  shore-gang  of  fifty  who,  despite 
their  stout  ashpoles,  had  been  unable  to  carry  off  anything 
except  their  wounded.  He  would  have  caught  the  lugger,  too, 
had  she  not  kept  doubling. 

The  commander  of  the  amphibious  Tommy  Devil  even  shared 
in  an  exciting,  if  unsuccessful,  chase  after  a  suspicious  landing- 
party,  going  out  with  a  galley-crew  in  a  rain-storm  in  a  borrowed 
tarpaulin  petticoat.  And  once  the  one-eyed  hero — who  felt 
himself  none  the  less  a  Nelson  because  his  eye  had  been  lost  in 
resisting  entry  into  the  navy — returned  Roger  Boldero's  visit, 
and  after  broaching  sundry  of  the  happily  unsealed  kegs,  the 
two  skippers  repaired  arm  in  arm — the  attitude  was  necessary — 
to  see  the  seventh  baby  and  present  the  fond  mother  with 
material  for  a  lace  cap. 

Now  while  Daniel  Quarles's  sister  had  been  lying  as  helpless 
as  the  lugger,  his  last  unmarried  daughter,  Emma,  a  beauty  still 
more  engaging,  was  housekeeping  for  Aunt  Susannah  and  minding 
the  other  four  children  (two  were  dead).  She  had  come  in  Daniel 
Quarles's  cart,  and  her  father  was  to  fetch  her  again  as  soon  as 
Susannah  was  up  (or  down).  He  should  already  have  come  for 
her,  but  the  rains  had  made  such  glue  of  the  roads  that  a  queerly 
spelt  letter  came  instead,  saying  he  would  wait  till  they  hardened. 
This  delay,  brief  as  it  was,  sufficed  to  bring  the  neaped  mariner 
under  the  spell  of  the  landlocked  village  maid,  so  sweet  to  look 
on,  so  serviceable  about  a  house,  and  so  motherly  with  a  baby 
that  the  novel  thought  of  matrimony  was  popped  into  a  rover's 
head.  She,  for  her  part,  was  still  more  swiftly  subjugated  by 
the  jolly  Roger  and  the  Tommy  Devil,  and  the  mutual  confession 
v/as  precipitated  by  the  opposite  menaces  of  tide  and  cart,  each 
threatening  to  bear  them  apart.     It  was  a  race  between  these 


I. 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  79 

and  the  course  of  true  love,  which  must  flow  rapid  to  flow  at 
all.  But  it  did  not  flow  smooth,  for  when  Daniel  Quarles  arrived 
to  convey  his  daughter  home  and  found  a  rival  vehicle  waiting 
uncouthly  on  the  beach  to  bear  her  off,  he  roundly  damned  the 
"  furriner  "  who  aspired  to  be  his  son-in-law,  and  he  included  in  his 
maledictions  the  Preventive  Service  and  all  its  works,  especially 
the  new  baby,  not  to  mention  the  times  and  the  tides.  For, 
though  he  had  long  ago  found  grace  and  become  a  Wesleyan,  he 
had  embraced  the  new  doctrine  with  the  old  robustiousness.  The 
natural  man  was  no  more  to  be  mitigated  than  a  hedgehog.  Had 
he  become  a  Quaker,  he  would  have  turned  the  other  cheek  in 
a  violent  collision  with  the  striker's  jaw.  He  enjoyed  being 
angry,  and  that  his  wrath  was  "  righteous  "  only  added  to  its 
zest.     And  "  righteous  "  it  now  was. 

The  trouble  was  not  that  Captain  Boldero  was  a  Churchman  : 
the  fellow  was  flippantly  ready  to  embrace  anything  on  earth 
that  included  Emma.  It  was  not  even  that  Daniel "  suspicioned  " 
him  a  smuggler.  Smuggling — even  if  you  had  a  brother-in-law 
in  the  Government — was  quite  as  respectable  as  poaching,  and 
in  days  when  the  rural  labourer  could  not  have  lived  had  he  not 
eked  out  his  obolus  by  occasional  rabbits  (with  the  necessary 
vegetables),  only  an  obtuse  squirearchy  could  hold  that  sinful. 

But  even  the  squire  had  no  opprobrium  for  the  smuggler  : 
gentry  and  peasantry  were  at  one  in  backing  up  the  manly 
patriot  who  thwarted  a  wicked  Government,  supplied  Britons 
with  the  cup  that  cheers  and  their  country  with  a  fine  naval 
reserve  and  early  information  of  Froggy's  movements.  The 
shores  of  Essex  as  of  all  Britain  were  honeycombed — apart  from 
their  large  natural  resources  and  their  ruins  and  haunted  houses 
— with  artificial  hiding-places,  cellars,  vaults,  and  secret  passages, 
and  every  man's  hand  was  against  the  Ishmael  of  the  Customs 
House.  Farmers  left  their  gates  open  at  night  to  facilitate  the 
cavalcades  and  coaches-and-six,  and  were  but  little  surprised  to 
find  tea  or  tobacco  coming  up  overnight  on  their  fields  like 
mushrooms.  Even  parsons  were  disposed  to  regard  such  treasures 
as  drifted  their  way  as  heaven-sent  flotsam,  and  Government 
circles  themselves — in  that  era  of  purchasable  votes  and  votable 
purchases — had  not  the  ethical  toploftiness  which  characterizes 
all  Governments  to-day.  No,  it  was  not  Boldero  the  Smuggler, 
but  Boldero  the  Smoker  that  found  himself  hurled  into  outer 
darkness  the  day  poor  shrinking  Emma  was  borne  off  in  her 


8o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

father's  cart.  *'  No  puffing  pirate  shall  cross  my  threshold,'^ 
swore  Daniel,  but  the  accent  was  on  the  puffing,  not  the  pirate. 
For  tobacco  had  become  tabu  in  the  Wesleyan  ranks  :  the 
godless  practice  of  smoking  was  formally  forbidden  to  the 
ministers.  Swiss  Protestantism  indeed  had  once  included  its 
prohibition  in  the  Ten  Commandments.  If  Methodism  did  not 
thus  re-edit  the  Decalogue,  its  horror  of  the  abomination  was  no 
less  keen,  and  a  change  of  practice  being  always  easier  than  a 
change  of  heart,  Daniel  Quarles  had  poured  a  deal  of  spiritual 
energy  into  the  sacrifice  of  his  pipe.  The  "  rapscallion  Boldero," 
he  declared,  not  only  sinned  himself,  but  was  the  cause  of  sin 
in  others,  trafficking  as  he  did  in  the  unholy  weed.  If  Emma 
insisted  on  a  "  smoker,"  wasn't  there  the  miller  at  Long  Brad- 
marsh,  he  inquired  with  grim  facetiousness,  meaning  that  the 
grotesque  Griggs  had  a  vote  by  living  in  a  house  with  a  chimney. 

But  Emma  for  all  her  gentle  airs  had  proved  "  obstropolus." 
She  had  discovered  that  Susannah's  husband  smoked  as  prodi- 
gally as  Roger — though  it  had  been  hidden  from  the  old  man  on 
his  rare  visits — and  that  so  far  from  bedevilling  men,  tobacco 
tended  to  angelicize  them.  Would  indeed  that  her  father  haloed 
himself  with  these  clouds !  Besides,  she  shrewdly  suspected 
that  even  a  Wesleyan  archangel,  appearing  suddenly  as  a  suitor, 
would  have  fared  similarly,  and  that  the  smoke  was  only  a  cover 
for  a  wish  to  keep  his  last  girl.  And  so,  though  the  lover  was  left 
lamenting,  and  the  ^ommy  Devil  duly  floated  off  without  the  lass, 
it  was  not  long  that  Emma  was  left  stranded  in  Blackwater  Hall. 
With  a  parent  removed  by  Providence  every  Tuesday  and 
Friday,  even  the  flabbiest  female  may  be  stiffened,  and  the  end 
was  smuggled  matrimony ;  though  very  soon  the  blessing  of  a 
minister  brought  Methodismx  into  their  madness.  Roger  Boldero 
not  only  became  a  Wesleyan  like  his  wife  and  her  father,  but  was 
one  of  the  first  Dissenters  to  be  married  in  their  own  chapel  by 
their  own  clergy  under  the  new  Act. 

The  odd  union  had  turned  out  happy,  but  with  one  dismal 
drawback — ;the  Bolderos  could  not  rear  children.  They  fared 
worse  even  than  the  Bidlakes,  and  with  no  such  obvious  reason. 
One  hapless  infant  after  another  died,  and  when  at  last,  in  their 
late  middle  years,  little  Jinny  was  safely  steered  through  three 
winters,  it  was  they  who  were  taken  as  if  in  lieu  of  their  progeny. 

The  pair  had  finally  settled  down  by  the  same  waterside  that 
had  united   them — the   attractions   of   "  Brandy   Hole   Creek  " 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  8i 

having  been  enhanced  by  the  perpetual  presence  of  their  relative 
by  marriage,  Commander  Dap,  who  with  the  subsidence  of  spirit 
duties  and  smuggling  had  found  his  mobile  cutter  replaced  by 
the  moored  "  Watch  Vessel  23."  Here  with  Susannah  and  his 
children  and  five  satellites  (and  their  wives  and  families)  the 
veteran  lived  in  domestic  beatitude  under  the  title  of  Chief 
Coast  Guard  Officer.  High  on  the  beach,  and  boarded  by  a 
commodious  staircase,  the  houseboat  seemed  a  standing  reminder 
of  the  adventure  of  the  Tommy  Devil.  Under  its  challenging 
eye,  that  adventurcPus  bark  had  sailed  out  and  home,  till  that 
last  fatal  voyage  when  the  lugger  foundered  almost  within  sight 
of  a  little  Sussex  port,  which  for  weeks  after  was  mysteriously 
littered  with  washed-up  tobacco-bales.  Though  Roger  Boldero 
was  rescued,  it  had  been  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  his  pros- 
perity, already  undermined  by  the  diminution  of  duties,  and 
a  few  years  later  both  he  and  Emma  were  dead  simultaneously 
of  smallpox.  Again  the  carrier's  cart  must  fare  to  the  Creek  to 
fetch  the  penniless  little  orphan,  and  there — ^soon  after  Will 
Flynt's  flight — Daniel  brought  her  back  for  the  burial  of  his 
sister  Susannah.  It  was  what  buried  Will's  memory  too  and 
replaced  him  in  her  prayers  by  a  new  being,  conceived  as  her 
"  Angel  Mother." 

HI 

The  moment  she  saw  and  smelt  the  creek  she  knew  she  had 
carried  it  in  her  soul  all  along  :  the  white  hut  with  its  flagged 
mast,  the  great  Watch  Vessel,  the  tumble  of  cottages,  sheds, 
barrels,  pecking  fowls,  grubbing  black  pigs,  recumbent  ladders, 
discoloured  boats  with  their  keels  upwards,  black  rotting  barges, 
and  rigged  smacks  stranded  on  hard  steep  mud.  The  sea  came 
in  sluggishly  through  a  broad  green  chine,  half  slime,  half  green 
water,  spitted  with  gaunt  encrusted  poles  to  mark  the  channel. 
The  water  seemed  even  wider  than  she  remembered,  and  yet 
not  so  wide,  for  it  was  split  by  an  island  or  a  promontory  that 
gave  a  second  sail-dotted  expanse  between  her  and  the  farther 
shore.  She  yearned  now  towards  that  ultimate  hump  of  hazy 
woodland,  and  it  was  to  remain  for  ever  bathed  in  the  quiet 
beauty  which  wrapped  it  around  as  Methusalem  toiled  up  to  the 
"  Leather  Bottel."  They  were  to  stay  the  night  there,  for  Daniel 
would  have  none  of  the  Commander's  hospitaHty,  he  being  still 
unforgiven.     Besides,  the  child  might  be  afraid  of  the  corpse. 


82  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

It  was  while  sitting  on  that  sea-wall  with  the  octogenarian  that 
evening,  her  great  grown-up  fingers  toying  once  again  with  tiny 
white  shells  that  strewed  its  top,  and  pewits  again  trying  to  lead 
her  from  their  young,  that  she  first  heard  in  broken  outlines 
how  these  waters  had  washed  her  into  being.  Something,  too, 
she  gleaned  from  her  refound  relative-in-law,  the  chief  mourner, 
whose  cocked  hat,  tattooed  arm  and  genial  senescence — not  to 
mention  his  house-boat — ^were  one  of  the  pleasantest  impressions 
or  re-impressions  of  the  funeral ;  and  whose  fascinating  trick 
of  rolling  one  eye  while  the  other  was  fixed  in  a  glassy  stare 
almost  made  the  child  lose  the  sense  of  what  he  was  saying.  The 
death  of  his  wife  had  reminded  the  veteran  of  the  death  of 
Nelson — nearly  forty  years  before — and  his  tremulous  tones  grew 
still  shakier  as  he  recalled  how  the  flags  over  the  hut  and  the 
Watch  Vessel  and  every  other  flag  in  England  had  flown  at 
half-mast,  though  of  course  there  were  more  joyous  aspects  of 
"  Trafalgar  "  to  be  celebrated  in  bottles  of  Bony's  own  brandy. 
He  frankly  admitted  he  had  himself  been  "  three  sheets  in  the 
wind  " — an  image  of  bed-linen  fluttering  on  a  clothes-line  that 
long  puzzled  her.  He  took  her  abaft  the  Watch  Vessel — it  was  a 
way  of  leaving  Daniel  Quarles  alone  with  his  dead  sister — and 
recounted  his  astonishment  at  seeing  her  father's  boat  spued  up 
like  Jonah  out  of  the  whale. 

"  A  handsome  man,"  he  told  her  to  her  pleasure.  But  he 
spoilt  it  all  by  adding,  "  though  he  would  talk  the  hind  leg  off 
a  dog." 

"  But  wasn't  that  cruel  ?  "  the  little  girl  faltered. 

Dap  laughed.  "  He  never  did  it  really,  dearie,  and  if  the  leg 
had  come  off,  he'd  have  helped  the  lame  dog  over  a  stile.  And 
so  many  lingos — parleyvooing  in  French  and  swearing  in  Double 
Dutch.     I  don't  wonder  your  angel  mother  fell  in  love  with  him." 

"  My  angel  mother  !  "  echoed  Jinny  excitedly.  "  Was  my 
mother  an  angel  ?  " 

The  veteran  was  taken  aback.  For  a  child  who  must  be  past 
nine  such  primitiveness  was  startling.  He  had  spoken  loosely, 
hardly  knowing  whether  he  alluded  to  Emma's  present  heavenly 
abode  or  to  her  sweet-temperedness  on  earth.  He  did  not  know 
that  little  Jinny  read  nothing  but  literature  in  which  angels 
were  a  common  feature  of  the  landscape,  and  that  Miss  Gentry 
had  not  measured  her  for  her  blacks  without  dwelling  on  her 
own  stained-glass  specimen. 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  83 

"  She  was  as  pretty  as  one,"  said  the  Commander  after  an 
instant,  "  and  now  she  is  one."  Thus  it  was  that  Jinny's  mother^ 
already  felt  as  a  hovering  sweetness,  took  on  definite  wings,  and 
even  when  Jinny's  maturer  experience  amputated  them  from  her 
earthly  existence,  they  were  what  she  still  hovered  over  her 
child  with. 

"Susannah  and  she'll  make  a  pair  now,"  he  added,  feeling 
suddenly  disloyal  to  the  corpse  at  home. 

"  Susannah  ?  "  queried  Jinny,  for  her  grandfather  had  been 
calling  his  sister  "  Pegs  " — "  poor  Pegs  !  " 

"  Your  mother's  aunt." 

It  was  a  new  idea,  an  angel's  aunt.  She  saw  the  twain  flyings 
Susannah  sailing  with  more  sweeping  pinions,  her  mother  softly 
rustling. 

The  funeral  was  in  style,  and  Jinny  helped  to  set  out  the 
refreshments  in  the  saloon.  There  was  some  dispute  as  to  whether 
her  grandfather  could  join  the  grand  procession  in  his  tilt-cart, 
but  though  he  urged  that  squires  were  proud  to  be  buried  from 
farm-wagons,  he  consented  to  ride — like  a  fish  out  of  water — 
inside  a  mourning-coach,  and  not  even  on  the  box. 

The  Commander  and  Jinny  shared  his  dismal  grandeur,  she 
sitting  bodkin  though  there  was  an  empty  seat  opposite,  which 
"  the  seventh  baby  "  had  been  expected  to  occupy.  But  Toby 
had  not  arrived  from  his  ship — he  was  a  gunner — in  time,  and 
the  earlier  progeny  were  still  more  scattered. 

The  widower  held  his  handkerchief  in  his  fist,  but  owing  to  the 
heat  of  a  discussion  on  the  manner  the  Navy  had  gone  to  the 
dogs — or  returned  from  them — since  the  Admiralty  had  set  up 
a  gunnery  school  on  a  Portsmouth  ship,  he  used  it  only  to  mop 
his  brow. 

"  Excellent,  indeed  1  "  He  was  mocking  at  the  ship's  name. 
"  The  ruination  of  the  sarvice  I  tell  you.  It  all  comes  from 
doing  away  with  the  pressgang — stands  to  reason  they  picked 
out  the  finest  chaps — "  here  the  Gaffer  snorted — "  Oh  you  may 
sniff,  but  for  fighting  you  want  guts  and  muscle.  Look  what 
England  was  in  them  days  and  what  she  is  coming  to  now." 

"  To  my  lookin'-at-it-an'-thinkin'-o't-too  " — the  Gaffer  made 
one  breathless  word  of  it — "  'tis  a  blessin'  to  be  riddy  of  all  them 
gaolbirds,  swearers,  drinkers,  smokers,  and  fornicators." 

"  Hush ! "  The  Commander  tried  to  wink  his  glass  eye 
towards  Jinny. 


84  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  She  don't  understand.  Oi  remember,  the  year  my  good-for^ 
nawthen  Gabriel  smashed  up  a  threshin' -machine  (and  the  poor 
farmer  dedn't  git  no  compensation  neither,  though  ef  his  furniture 
had  been  smashed  'twould  have  come  on  the  Hundred)  that  wery 
same  year  Ebenezer  Wagstaff — for  'twas  the  coronation  year  of 
King  William,  Oi  remember,  just  afore  my  Emma  desarted 
me 

"  That  was  a  Sailor  King,"  interrupted  Dap,  half  to  stave  off 
Eliminations  against  Jinny's  dead  mother.  "  Began  as  middy 
under  Cap'n  Digby  in  the  unlucky  Royal  George — a  ninety-eight 
gun  ship  she  was " 

"  Ye  put  me  off  the  track,  drat  ye,  aldoe  it  leads  back  to 
Ebenezer  Wagstaff  all  the  same,  seein'  as  the  Prince  might  ha' 
rubbed  showlders  with  a  thief  as  was  sentenced  for  stealin'  half- 
a-suvran  from  a  barge  on  the  Brad.  He  could  ha'  been  hanged 
for  it  in  them  days,  mind  you — the  case  bein'  as  clear  as  day  or 
rather  as  black  as  night.  But  they  marcifuUy  brought  him  in 
guilty  to  stealin'  nine  and  'levenpence  and  that  saved  his  neck, 
being  a  navigable  river,  and  the  judge  give  him  the  option  of 
gaol  or  jinin'  the  Navy." 

"  And  a  proper  thing  too.  Set  a  thief  to  catch  a  Frenchy,  and 
him  used  to  taking  prizes  by  water.  Nowadays  before  the 
captain  hoists  his  pennant  he's  got  a  crew  dumped  on  him  that's 
no  choice  of  his — mealy-mouthed  lubbers,  full  of  book-larnin', 
who  don't  know  a  brigantine  from  a  topsail  schooner  :  it's  the 
red  ensign  that  gets  all  the  good  stuff,  not  the  white.  You  mark 
me,  it'll  be  the  downfall  of  England." 

"  England'll  never  fall  down  while  she's  got  God-fearin'  con- 
gregations," maintained  Daniel  Quarles,  and  Jinny's  devout 
little  heart  thrilled  to  hear  it. 

In  the  pleasant  sunny  graveyard  there  were  apiaries  and  a 
dismantled  tower  almost  smothered  by  blackberry-bushes,  and 
the  tombs  and  gravestones  passed  imperceptibly  into  a  garden 
of  monkey-trees  and  weeping  willows.  These  wrought  in  her  no 
stirring  of  memories,  but  as  she  had  got  off  the  coach,  the  standing 
church  tower,  square  and  ivy-wrapped,  had  composed  beautifully 
with  ricks  of  all  sorts,  with  trees,  old  tiles,  and  thatch,  into  a 
picture  that  seemed  as  much  hers  as  the  waterside. 

The  parson — Susannah  had  remained  a  Churchwoman — was 
some  minutes  late,  and  Jinny  was  gratified  to  note  how  strong 
her  grandfather  was  :    how  pillar-like  he  stood  in  his  long  black 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  85 

mourner's  cloak  under  the  weight  of  the  coffin  at  the  churchyard 
gate,  while  all  the  other  bearers,  his  obvious  juniors,  shifted  and 
sweated.  Nor  did  he  blubber  either  like  the  Commander,  whose 
weakness,  considering  how  often  she  had  been  adjured  to  be 
"  spunky,"  and  not — now  that  she  was  "  grown  up  " — to  cry, 
was  as  disconcerting  as  the  double  existence  of  his  wife  in  the 
coffin  and  the  empyrean.  However,  Dap  grew  "  good  "  again 
when  the  thrilling  if  still  more  disconcerting  episode  of  lowering  his 
Susannah  as  far  as  possible  from  the  skies  and  banking  her  safely 
against  ascent,  was  over,  and — Daniel  Quarles  having  gone 
vaguely  roving  over  the  churchyard — the  widower  led  her 
stealthily  in  his  absence  to  a  stone  behind  the  ruined  tower — in 
the  "  unconsecrated "  or  Dissenting  area — and  read  to  her 
the  inscription,  following  it  for  her  confirmation  with  his  black- 
gloved  forefinger  : 

Here  Lies  Roger  Boldero 

After  Many  Stormy  Voyages 

Safely  Neaped  in  Christ. 

He  arrested  himself  suddenly  and  whisked  her  round  the  tower. 

"  But  we  didn't  read  it  all,"  she  protested. 

"  Oh,  it  only  says  :  '  And  also  Emma  Boldero,  Wife  of  the 
Above.'     But  don't  tell  your  grandfather." 

The  child  wondered  why  she  was  to  keep  Emma's  relationship 
to  the  Above  a  secret — she  had  already  gathered  from  her 
grandfather  that  he  knew  it — and  she  was  distressed  as  well  as 
puzzled  at  the  strange  quarrel  that  broke  out  in  the  homeward 
coach. 

"  It  ain't  at  all  a  proper  word,"  said  Daniel  Quarles.  "  You 
might  as  well  put  '  carted  to  Christ '  on  mine." 

"  That'll  be  your  affair,"  persisted  the  widower,  "  but  this 
ain't.     And  how  you  came  to  see  it  gets  over  me." 

The  Gaffer  flushed  uneasily.  "  Oi've  got  two  eyes,  I  suppose," 
he  jerked. 

The  naval  veteran  glared  glassily.  "  Them  that  pay  the 
piper  call  the  tune,"  he  retorted  defensively.  "  Besides,"  he 
added  more  gently,  "  Emma  always  said  she'd  have  it  some- 
how on  her  tombstone." 

"  Emma  was  a  silly." 

"  Hush  1  "  Dap  again  indicated  the  child  with  his  glassy  eye, 
now  trickling  without  the  other  as  in  half-mourning. 


86  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Oi  won't  hush  it  up.  That's  got  to  goo.  The  mason's  got 
to  cut  another  for  me.     Who  arxed  you  to  pay  pipers  ?  " 

"  Such  a  handsome  stone  to  be  torn  up  !  It's  a  desecration, 
it's  unlawful." 

"  Unlawful  ?     Whose  darter  is  she,  mine  or  yourn  ?  " 

"  Not  yours.     You  cut  her  off." 

"  She  cut  me  off.  And  ef  poor  Pegs  and  you  had  done  your 
duty  by  my  gal,  he'd  ha'  never  crossed  your  doorstep." 

*'  He'd  ha'  met  her  on  the  sea-wall.  I  couldn't  help  his 
beholding  her  looks,  any  more  than  you  could  help  having  a 
handsome  daughter — or  for  the  matter  of  that,  a  handsome 
sister."     His  handkerchief  came  out  again. 

"  Oi'm  not  denying  their  looks — a  man  with  half  an  eye  could 
see  that.  'Tis  just  the  handsome  gals  as  seems  to  throw  their- 
selves  away,"  he  added  musingly. 

"  Maybe  they  are  unhappy  at  home,"  suggested  the  widower, 
with  equal  philosophic  aloofness. 

"  Or  in  the  housen  they  stays  at,"  assented  the  Gaffer.  "  But 
let  bygones  by  bygones.  It  may  be  the  Lord  dumped  him.  down 
for  our  good.  All  Oi  say  is,  that  word's  got  to  goo.  A  Church- 
man may  not  see  the  blasphemy,  but  think  o'  what  John  Wesley 
would  ha'  said  to  it." 

"  He'd  ha'  said  'twas  a  wicked  extravagance  to  waste  such  a 
fine  stone." 

"  The  mason'U  take  it  back.  Happen  there'll  be  another 
Roger  Boldero  dead  and  neaped  some  day." 

"  Very  likely,"  sneered  the  veteran.  "  And  also  an  Emma, 
Wife  of  the  Above." 

"  Hush  !  "  The  little  maid  nudged  him,  wondering  he  should 
forget  his  own  monition. 

"  That  has  more  sense  than  you  !  "  cried  the  Gaffer  in  high 
glee.  "Out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings!"  And 
drawing  the  astonished  Jinny  to  his  bristly  beard,  he  kissed  her 
lips  with  a  hearty  smack. 

Despite  these  half-understood  discords.  Jinny  was  very  sorry 
to  leave  the  stony-eyed  veteran  and  the  motley  waterside. 

"  Sometimes,"  she  confided  to  the  more  sympathetic  swivel 
eye,  as  her  grandfather  was  harnessing  Methusalem  for  their 
return,  "  I  wish  I  had  never  come  to  earth  at  all." 

Again  Dap  was  startled  by  her  simplicity — ^had  not  Daniel  been 
telling  him  what  a  useful  little  body  she  was  in  the  business  ? 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  87 

"  But  then  you'd  never  have  had  your  grandfather — or  me," 
he  said,  stroking  her  cheek. 

"  I  should  have  had  God — and  my  angel  mother  !  " 

IV 

"  Noa,  arter  she  run  away  with  her  Boldero  Oi'd  never  cross 
her  doorstep,  never,"  confessed  the  old  carrier,  picking  up  the 
story  later,  as  she  rode  beside  him  on  their  day's  work.  He 
was  getting  so  old  now  that  he  preferred  to  talk  of  twenty  rather 
than  of  two  years  before,  •  and  the  veneer  of  book-education 
which  his  unexpected  inheritance  of  the  business  had  necessitated 
had  fallen  away,  and  he  was  speaking  more  and  more  in  the 
idioms  of  his  illiterate  youth,  curiously  tempered  at  times  by 
the  magnificent  English  of  his  Bible. 

"  But  that  was  wicked  !  "  said  Jinny  decisively.  She  felt  it 
wrong  indeed  that  a  father  should  thus  cut  off  his  daughter,  but 
to  have  done  this  when  that  daughter  was  an  angel  (even  if  only 
in  the  making),  still  more  when  that  daughter  was  her  own 
mother,  seemed  to  her  confused  consciousness  the  climax  of 
iniquity. 

"  Wicked  !  The  contrairy  !  Oi'd  taken  my  Bible  oath  never 
to  set  foot  over  her  doorstep.  So  Oi  dedn't  have  no  chance,  you 
see." 

Tinny  was  silenced.  She  herself  had  succumbed  to  an  oath, 
and  that  indeed  on  a  less  awful  book. 

"  Arter  she  had  lost  two  childer,"  he  went  on,  "  and  the  third 
got  measles,  she  sent  a  man  on  hossback  to  beg  me  to  take  oflF 
the  spell.  Thought,  d'ye  see,  dearie,  that  for  her  frowardness 
and  disobedience  Oi'd  laid  a  curse  on  'em  all.  Like  one  of  our 
Methody  preachers,  the  chap  seemed,  with  all  the  texts  to  his 
tongue's  tip,  and  pleaded  that  wunnerful  he  'most  made  me 
believe  Oi  did  have  the  evil  eye.  But  though  of  course  Oi 
hadn't  no  more  to  do  wi'  the  deaths  of  your  little  brothers  and 
sisters  than  a  babe  unborn — or  you  yourself,  for  the  matter  o' 
that,  as  was  a  babe  unborn — Oi  couldn't  break  my  oath  and 
goo  and  pretend  to  cure  the  wean,  and  so  when  the  measles 
turned  to  pneumonia  and  it  died,  she  got  woundily  distracted, 
and  writ  me  two  sheets  sayin'  as  Oi  was  a  child-murderer.  That 
didn't  worrit  me  no  more  than  the  child's  death,  seein'  as  the 
Lord  does  everything  for  the  best,  though  Oi  had  to  pay  double 


88  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

on  the  letter.  But  one  fine  arternoon  the  preachin'  chap  comes 
again  and  says  she'd  been  layin'  paralysed-Hke  for  a  month  and 
wouldn't  Oi  come  and  forgive  her  afore  she  kicked  the  bucket  !  " 

"  Oh,  Gran'fer  !  "  Jinny  protested. 

''  Oi'm  givin'  you  his  words,"  said  the  Gaffer  defensively. 
"  At  least  that  was  the  meanin',  though  'haps  he  put  it  different, 
me  not  havin'  his  gift  o'  the  gab.  But  bein'  never  a  man  to 
nuss  rancour,  when  folks  own  up,  Oi  said  that  even  ef  Oi  could 
forgive  my  darter,  never  could  Oi  enter  a  house  harbourin'  that 
rascal  Boldero " 

"  Oh,  Gran'fer  !  "  she  protested  again. 

"There's  no  call  to  bristle  up — he  wasn't  your  father  yet. 
*  But  Boldero  ain't  at  home,  he's  off  on  a  jarney,'  says  the  chap. 
'  D'ye  swear  that  ? '  says  Oi.  '  By  God,  Oi  will,'  says  he.  '  Then 
od  rabbet,  Oi'll  goo,'  says  Oi." 

"  But,"  urged  Jinny,  "  if  you  had  taken  your  oath " 

"  You  wait  till  Oi've  broke  it  !  Oi  knew  'twould  be  dead  o' 
night  by  the  time  Oi  got  to  Brandy  Hole  Crick  and  Oi  made  him 
swear  too  he  wouldn't  let  on  to  a  soul,  partic'ler  to  that  rascal 
Boldero  or  my  sister  Pegs  and  her  cock-eyed  son  of  a  cocked  hat ; 
and  off  we  scuttles  in  a  twinklin',  him  on  his  hoss  and  me  on 


mme- 


"  Methusalem  ?  " 

"  Noa,  Jezebel.     Methusalem  and  you  wasn't  born  yet  !  " 

"  Were  we  both  in  heaven,  then  ?  " 

"  Hosses  don't  come  from  heaven." 

"  From  where  then  ?  " 

"  From  stables  o'  course.  And  you  should  see  them  two 
animals  gallopin'  like  hell.  'Twas  a  race  for  the  Crick.  We 
went  down  this  wery  road  like  fleck  and  turned  off  by  the 
smithy " 

"  And  who  won  ?  "  asked  Jinny  breathlessly. 

"  He  hadn't  a  chance,  his  hoss  bein'  that  winded  already,  and 
him  a  heavyweight ;  Oi  had  the  best  part  of  an  hour  with  your 
mother  afore  he  crossed  the  doorstep." 

"  But  how  could  you  break  your  Bible  oath  ?  "  persisted  Jinny. 

He  chuckled.  "  Oi  dedn't  cross  her  doorstep.  Oi'd  sworn  not 
to,  and  a  Quarles  never  breaks  even  his  plain  word,  bein'  a  forth- 
right family.  'Twas  gettin'  on  to  buU's-noon  and  like  pitch,  but 
Oi  could  see  her  bedroom  above  by  the  light  in  it,  and  up  Oi 
climbs  on  Jezebel's  back  and  lifted  myself  up  hy  the  sill  and  got 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  89 

my  knee  acrost  it  and  pushed  open  the  casement.  Lord,  how 
she  screamed !  Up  she  flew  from  her  dyin'-bed — ^no  more 
paralysis  or  sich-like  maggots  and  moUigrubs  Oi  warrant  you  !  '* 
And  his  chuckle  broadened  into  a  hearty  laugh. 

Jinny  was  strangely  reHeved.     "  Then  she  didn't  die  !  " 

"  How  could  she  die,  silly,  when  you  wasn't  there  yet  ?  Od 
rabbet,  wasn't  your  feyther  flabbergasted  to  see.  her  up  and 
bobbish  and  me  holdin'  her  hand  !  " 

"  My  father  !     But  he  was  on  a  journey  !  " 

"  Yes,  to  me,  the  great  ole  sinner.  You  ain't  guessed  'twas 
him  with  the  gift  o'  the  gab  ?  But  no  more  did  Daniel  Quarles, 
never  conceivin'  a  sailor  on  hossback  and  him  swelled  in  the 
stomach  with  prodigal  livin'  since  the  day  he  diddled  Pegs's 
husband  and  tried  to  diddle  me  out  o'  my  darter.  But  Oi'll  do 
him  the  justice  to  say  he  never  did  blab  to  the  Daps  about  my 
comin' — and  no  more  dedn't  your  mother." 

Jinny's  hand  sought  her  grandfather's,  though  through  the 
whip-handle  in  his  she  could  only  secure  a  finger.  "  But  why 
should  you  hide  your  goodness,  Gran'fer  ?  " 

"  'Twasn't  no  goodness,  only  nat'ral,  Emma  bein'  punished 
and  chastised  enough  from  on  high.  Why,  if  Pegs  and  her  false- 
eyed  mannikin'd  a-got  wind  as  we'd  made  it  up,  Emma  and  me 
and  Roger,  they'd  ha'  come  to  think  they  was  in  the  right  arter 
all,  lettin'  Emma  be  kidnapped  by  a  furriner.  x\nd  that  'ud  ha' 
been  the  last  straw.  As  ill  luck  would  have  it  Dap  come  knockin' 
there  that  wery  dead  o'  night,  he  havin'  just  come  home  from  a 
trip  and  heard  from  Pegs  as  her  niece  was  dyin'.  Oi  shan't 
soon  forgit  the  start  Oi  got  at  that  knockin',  all  on  us  settin'  so 
hearty  at  supper,  and  Emma  in  her  scarlet  dressin'-gownd,  smart 
as  a  carrot.  Noigh  quackled  Oi  was,  with  the  brandy  gooin'  the 
wrong  way.  Your  feyther  he  goes  to  the  door  with  his  face  full 
o'  lobster  and  sputters  through  the  crack  as  they'd  got  a  new 
doctor  who  was  operatin'  on  her  and  wery  'opeful."  He  chuckled 
again.  ''  And  Oi  count  'twas  a  better  doctor  than  any  in  Brandy 
Hole  Crick,  for  wery  soon  there  was  a  new  baby — though  that 
died  too,  Oi'm  thankful  to  say  !  " 

"You  aren't !  "     The  little  listener  loosed  his  finger. 
Ik     "  Yes,  Oi  am,  dearie."     He  cracked  his  whip.     "  Otherwise 
■Wouldn't  Pegs  ha'  gone  to  her  grave  believin'  it  was  my  onfor- 
^■nveness  laid  a  spell  on  the  tothers  ?     That's  what  womenkind 
^Be.     Same  as  when  the  Faith  Healers  got  hold  of  her.     Arter 


90  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

you  was  oiled  and  prayed  over,  they  said  'twas  want  o'  faith 
had  killed  all  the  tothers."    . 

"  Was  I  oiled  and  prayed  over  ?  " 

"  Well,  you  see  when  you  come,  poor  Emma  felt  elders  and 
oils  was  all  there  was  left  to  try — there's  a  rare  lot  of  you  Peculiars 
down  them  parts  and  all  the  way  to  Southend,  and  they'd  been 
gettin'  round  her  like  gulls  round  the  plough — so  the  instant  you 
started  barkin' " 

"  Barking  ?  "  gasped  the  little  girl. 

"  You  had  the  croup — so  she  turned  Peculiar,"  he  explained. 
"  Like  you,"  he  added  reproachfully.  "  And  a  wery  dangerous 
thing  to  do,  bein'  as  you  might  ha'  died  like  the  tothers.  Did, 
she'd  ha'  been  had  up  for  child-murder — what  she  accused 
me  of." 

"  And  why  weren't  the  doctors  had  up,  that  didn't  save  all 
my  little  brothers  and  sisters  ?  "  asked  Jinny. 

"  That's  just  how  your  mother  used  to  argufy,"  he  said  angrily, 
flicking  at  poor  Methusalem.  "  Turnin'  everything  topsy-tivvy, 
Oi  says.  And  what  was  the  result  ?  Two  years  arter  you  was 
prayed  and  oiled  out  o'  croup,  she  was  took  herself  with  smallpox 
and  wouldn't  see  a  soul  except  elders  and  deacons  and  sich-like 
truck.  Oi  will  say  for  your  father  though,  that  he  was  alius 
firm  with  her  ;  naught  she  could  say  could  turn  him  from  his 
Wesleyan  principles,  and  when  he  caught  her  smallpox  he  had 
the  doctor  in  like  blazes  and  took  all  the  medicine  he  could  lay 
hands  on.  But  Emma  would  stick  to  her  own  way — though  she 
died  of  it,  poor  thing." 

"  But  didn't  you  tell  me  father  died  the  same  day  as  my  angel 
inother  ?  " 

"  Ain't  that  w^hy  Oi  come  for  you  in  my  cart,  bein'  as  the 
creditors  sold  up  every  thin'  except  the  infected  beddin'  ?  " 

"  I  know,  Gran'fer,"  she  interrupted.  "  But  then  didn't 
father  die  of  his  way  just  as  much  as  mother  of  hers  ?  " 

"  That's  a  nat'ral  death  when  you  die  with  a  doctor,"  he 
maintained. 

"  And  were  you  there  when  they  died  ?  "  said  the  child  after 
a  mournful  pause. 

His  brow  clouded  obstinately.  "  How  could  Oi  be,  dearie, 
bein'  as  Oi'd  taken  my  Bible  oath  ?  " 

"  You  could  ha'  gone  through  the  window  ?  " 

"  With  folks  lookin'  on  and  nusses  about,  as  'ud  ha'  thought 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  91 

me  loony.     Why,  'twas  impossible  for  me  even  to  goo  to  the 
funeral." 

"  Oh,  Gran'fer  !  " 

He  looked  fiercer,  and  poor  Methusalem  got  another  flick. 
"  Wouldn't  Pegs  be  there,  she  havin'  her  nat'ral  feelin'  ?  Could 
Oi  let  her  think  Oi'd  come  'cos  Oi  was  sorry  Oi  hadn't  made 
it  up  with  my  darter  afore  she  died  ?  Nay,  that  'ud  a-been 
right-down  deceit,  bein'  as  there  wasn't  no  ground  for  remorse. 
Happen  he'd  a-been  at  the  churchyard  too  with  his  fish-eye — 
dedn't  you  see  the  stone  he  put  up,  drat  his  imperence,  as  ef 
Emma  and  Roger  was  aught  of  hisn — mebbe  he'd  a-preached  to 
me  as  Oi  ought  to  ha'  forgiven  my  darter  time  she  was  still  alive. 
'Twas  on  the  cards  he'd  say  Oi'd  broken  your  mother's  heart,  the 
blinkin'  fool,  he  not  knowin'  'twas  me  as  raised  her  from  the 
dead  and  had  her  goffling  lobster  with  your  feyther  in  a  scarlet 
dressin'-gownd  time  he  was  knockin'  at  her  door  to  make 
inquirations " 

"  Yes,  I've  heard  about  that,"  she  interrupted. 

"  Who  told  you  ?  "  he  said  suspiciously.  **  There  was  only 
three  of  us  inside  the  door  and  two's  dead." 

"  rou  told  me." 

"  Me  !     Oi  never  told  a  soul — Oi'll  take  my  Bible  oath." 

"  You  told  me  just  a  minute  ago." 

"  Ah  !  "  He  was  appeased.  "  That  may  be.  But  Oi  never 
told  you  afore — Oi'll  take  my  oath." 

"  No,  never  before,  Gran'fer." 

There  was  a  pause  of  peace. 

Jinny  was  afraid  to  stir  up  the  subject  for  weeks.  But  her 
little  brain  had  been  busy  with  the  story,  and  finally  taking 
advantage  of  a  not  unfriendly  reference  to  Roger  Boldero,  she 
asked  :  "  And  was  that  the  last  time  you  saw  father,  when  he 
was  eating  lobster  with  my  angel  mother  in  the  dead  of  night  ?  " 

"  Nay,  nay,  Oi  seen  lots  of  'em  both,  afore  Oi  was  shet  out 
agen  by  molloncholy  circumstances." 

"  Ah  1  "  Jinny  brightened  up.  "  And  did  you  always  go  in 
by  the  window  ?  " 

"  'Twasn't  in  the  house  :  'twas  on  board  the  Tommy  Devil. 
And  that  ain't  got  no  doorstep."     He  laughed  gleefully. 

^''  Then  did  you  go  in  by  the  porthole  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  smiling. 
^'  Lord,  missie,  wherever  did  ye  get  that  word  ?  Ah,  Oi  mind 
e  now — you  was  aboard  the  Watch  Wessel  the  time  we  buried 


92  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

poor  Pegs.  No,  dearie,  Oi  just  shinned  up  the  ladder,  loight  as 
a  bird  with  that  liddle  ole  oath  off  my  showlders.  But  Pegs  and 
her  one-eyed  fool  of  a  pardner  never  suspicioned  naught,  for  Oi 
never  would  set  foot  on  the  Tommy  Devil  except  she  was  layin^ 
up  in  coves  and  cricks  where  the  Gov'ment  turned  its  glass  eye — 
he,  he,  he  !  Not  that  Oi  had  much  stomach  for  his  etarnal 
brandy — you  can't  take  a  satisfactory  swig  o'  that  and  keep 
your  sea-legs — but  your  feyther  he  kept  a  cask  o'  beer  special 
for  me,  and  Emma  she  'ad  alius  cold  roasts  and  kickshaws  to  be 
washed  down  with  it.  Oi  reckon  Oi  was  on  board  with  your 
parents  nigh  once  a  month." 

"  Then  what  a  pity  they  didn't  invite  you  on  board  years 
before  !  " 

"  Ay,  'twas  a  pity.  Only  none  of  us  'ad  never  thought  o'  that 
way  out." 

"  Or  that  way  in,"  added  Jinny  excitedly.  ""  Why,  you  might 
have  gone  to  my  mother  the  day  after  your  oath  !  " 

The  Gaffer  sighed.  "  Mebbe  that  'ud  only  ha'  ruinated  your 
folks  quicker.  For  Oi  ain't  been  on  the  lugger  a  dozen  times  afore 
she  went  down  and  your  feyther  was  picked  up  by  the  revenue 
cutter,  bein'  the  onny  toime  he  was  took  at  sea — he,  he,  he ! 
Thussins  there  wasn't  no  place  to  meet  in,  and  to  goo  over  Emma's 
window-sill  was  too  risky,  for  Pegs  and  her  friends  was  alius  spyin' 
around,  and  there  wasn't  a  sharper  eye  in  the  Gov'ment  than 
that  dirty  little  Dap's— when  he  was  oif  duty." 

"  Bnt  why  didn't  they  come  to  see  you  at  Blackwater  Hall  ?  " 

"  Nay,  they  couldn't  do  that.  That  was  in  my  oath  too. 
Never  shall  they  cross  my  doorstep,  neither — Oi'd  sworn  it  on 
the  Book  !  " 

"  But  why  didn't  they  come  in  through  our  window  ?  There's 
hardly  ever  anybody  on  the  common  ?  " 

"  We  never  thought  o'  that,  neither."  He  heaved  a  deeper 
sigh.     "  Ay,  'twas  a  pity,"  he  repeated. 

That  night  Jinny  caught  his  eye  resting  more  than  once  on 
the  vases  of  dried  grass  before  their  casement. 

"  He  was  a  bonkka  man,  your  feyther,"  he  observed  at  last. 
"  Wery  big-built,  and  it's  a  middlin'  weeny  window." 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  93 

V 

Though  Jinny  winced  at  her  grandfather's  attacks  on  the 
Pecuhar  Faith  of  her  angel  mother,  she  gfew  in  time  to  under- 
stand the  odd  magnanimity  he  had  evinced  in  letting  her  go  to 
Sunday-school  with  the  Flynt  family  and  pick  up  the  doctrine. 
That  her  one  surviving  child  should  be  brought  up  of  the  sect 
that  had  saved  it,  was,  it  transpired,  poor  Emma's  dying  request, 
as  conveyed  by  his  sister  Susannah  Dap  to  the  unforgiving 
father,  whose  oath  never  to  cross  his  daughter's  doorstep  still 
held  when  he  drew  up  Methusalem  at  it  after  the  double  funeral, 
and  found  the  house  empty  even  of  Jinny.  ^, 

"  '  Child-stealin',  that's  what  it  is,'  Oi  told  Pegs  when  Oi  boarded 
the  Watch  Wessel,"  he  recounted  once  to  his  granddaughter  in 
the  cart.  "  '  Ain't  you  got  enough  o'  your  own  ? '  says  Oi.  '  'Twas 
through  your  havin'  one  too  many  that  Jinny's  here  at  all,'  Oi 
says.  '  Then,'  says  she,  sharp  as  a  needle, '  the  more  reason  she's 
mine.  You  cut  oil  her  mother,'  says  she,  '  and  now,  Daniel, 
Jinny  cuts  you  off.'  *  Not  so  fast,  sister,'  says  Oi.  ^  Whatever 
my  conduct  to  Emma — and  folks  with  stone  eyes  don't  alius  see 
through  stone  walls — the  poor  little  brat  haven't  enough  sense 
to  cut  me  off,  and  Oi  don't  cut  her  t)fl,  for  Oi  ain't  got  to  wisit 
sins  to  the  fourth  generation,  not  bein'  the  Almighty,  thank  the 
Lord.  That's  my  lawful  property.  Pegs,'  Oi  says,  '  and  same  as 
you  don't  hand  her  over,  Oi'll  summons  you  and  carry  off  two  o' 
yourn  in  my  cart — and  what's  more  Oi'll  ill-treat  'em  cruel  and 
hide  'em  twice  a  day  with  my  whip.' " 

''  You  didn't  mean  it,"  said  Jinny. 

"  Dedn't  Oi,  though  ?  " 

"  But  they  were  your  nephews  and  nieces  !  " 

"  The  more  right  to  wallop  'em.  You  should  ha'  seen  Pegs 
climb  down.  She  know'd  well  as  Oi  never  broke  my  word,  she 
bein'  o'  the  same  forthright  family.  Right  up  and  down,  Jo 
Perry,  as  the  sayin'  goos.  Do  to  others  as  they'd  like  to  do  to 
vou — that's  good  Christian  gospel.  Pegs  she  went  as  pale  as  a 
white  butterfly  and  hiked  you  out  on  deck  in  your  little  yaller 
frock  lookin'  as  pritty  as  a  gay.  Lord,  Oi  reckonized  you  on  the 
nail,  though  Oi'd  never  clapped  eyes  on  you  afore." 

"  You'd  never  seen  me  before  ?  "  cried  Jinny,  amazed. 

"  How  could  Oi  see  you — you  came  arter  the  ^omtny  Devil 


94  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  at  the  bottom,  and  your  feyther  never  got  the  dubs  from  the 
insurance  company,  bein'  a  flaw  in  the  articles  as  swallered  up 
all  the  rest  of  his  cash  in  the  lawsuit.  But  you'd  got  his  ways 
and  your  mother's  looks  " — Jinny  flushed  with  pleasure — ''  and 
'steddy  cuttin'  me  off,  you — ^h.a,  ha,  ha  ! — made  straight  for  my 
great  ole  beard  and  pulled  out  a  great  ole  fistful." 

"  Ought  I  to  have  cut  it  off  ?  "  laughed  Jinny  happily. 
'' '  D'ye    see    that.    Pegs,'    says    Oi,    '  blood's    thicker    than 
water.     Will  vou  come  along  o'  your  gran'fer,  liddle  maid  ? '  says 
Oi." 

'^  And  what  did  I  say  ?  "  asked  Jinny  breathlessly. 
"  You  dedn't  say  naught — you  bust  into  tears,  bein'  as  you 
thought  Oi  was  the  auctioneerer  and  you'd  been  sold  with  every- 
thing else,  poor  liddle  ole  orphan,  and  then  Pegs  catches  hold  o' 
you  and  says  you  was  clinging  to  her.  But  Oi  soon  stopped  that 
lob-loll,  for  Oi  holds  you  over  the  rail  and  shows  you  Methusalem 
all  prancin'  in  his  pride,  and  '  Won't  you  go  with  your  gran'fer's 
hoss,  liddle  maid  ? '  says  Oi." 
"  And  what  did  I  say  then  ?  " 

"  You  dedn't  say  naught,  but  in  a  twinklin'  you  jumps 
out  o'  Susannah's  arms,  scrambles  down  the  accommodation 
ladder,  and  was  rubbin'  noses  with  Methusalem.  And  Oi 
count  his  was  as  damp  as  yourn,  bein'  as- he'd  come  without 
a  stop." 

"  Dear  old  Methusalem  !  "  And  nothing  would  content  Jinny 
but  she  must  jump  down  and  rub  noses  with  him  now,  and  again 
both  noses  were  damp.  But  as  Methusalem  had  seized  the 
opportunity  to  come  to  a  standstill,  and  Jinny,  lost  in  shadowy 
memories,  continued  the  caress  ten  seconds  too  long,  the  old 
rcarrie  declared  with  sudden  querulousness  that  he  hadn't  got 
time  for  loolishness,  and  that  since  he  had  burdened  him- 
self  with    Jinny   his   business   had  gone  "  to  rack  and   ruina- 


tion." 


"  Peculiar,  Pegs  warned  me,  Oi'd  have  to  bring  you  up,"  he 
added,  as  Jinny  hastily  clambered  back  to  his  side.  "  And 
Peculiar's  the  word  for  your  gooin's  on.  Not  that  Methusalem's 
got  more  sense  nor  you.  Oi  count  ef  there  w^as  churches  for 
cattle,  he'd  a-stoyled  hisself  Brother  Methusalem  and  kicked 
over  his  drench." 

It  was  the  Gaffer's  instinctive  conviction  that  faith  went  with 
the  father.     In  thus  yielding  to  Emma's  dying  breath  he  may, 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  95 

apart  from  the  pressure  of  death- bed  wishes,  have  found  vent  for 
a  lingering  resentment  against  the  seductive  Boldero.  Or  was 
it  that  he  had  a  lurking  apprehension  that  the  one  child  of 
Emma's  which  had  at  least  survived  prayer,  might  really  be  a 
testimony  to  the  teaching,  and  as  such  entitled  to  share  it  ?  Jinny 
at  any  rate  had  absolute  faith  in  the  doctrine.  It  rested  on  the 
fifth  chapter  of  James  as  clearly  as  the  big  Bible  containing  that 
chapter  rested  on  the  chest  of  drawers.  Once  indeed  when  the 
Gaffer  w^as  unbearably  mocking,  she  had  been  goaded  to  read 
him  the  basal  verses  : 

"  Is  any  sick  among  you  ?  let  him  call  for  the  elders  of  the 
church  ;  and  let  them  pray  over  him,  anointing  him  with  oil  in 
the  name  of  the  Lord  : 

"  And  the  prayer  of  faith  shall  save  the  sick,  and  the  Lord  shall 
raise  him  up  :  and  if  he  have  committed  sins,  they  shall  be 
forgiven  him." 

But  the  Gaffer  had  not  collapsed  as  she  expected.  It  only  meant 
a  spiritual  saving,  in  case  he  died,  Daniel  Quarles  maintained, 
unruffled  :  otherwise  why  speak  of  his  sins  being  forgiven  ? 
Moreover  it  didn't  say  you  couldn't  have  a  doctor,  too. 

Crestfallen,  the  child  wept  in  a  corner  and  did  not  recover  her 
spirits  till  at  Sunday-school  Elder  Mawhood  had  supplied  her 
for  the  first  part  of  the  Gaffer's  contention  with  Mark  xvi.  18  : 
"  They  shall  lay  hands  on  the  sick  and  they  shall  recover  "  ; 
while  Martha,  who  was  still  at  that  date  a  Peculiar,  comforted 
and  eqL]ipped  her  against  the  second  part  with  Asa,  King 
of  Judah,  who  (II  Chronicles  xvi)  was  diseased  in  his  feet : 
"yet  sought  not  to  the  Lord  but  to  the  physicians."  The 
Lord's  wishes  in  the  matter  were  thus  seen  to  be  clearly  in- 
dicated. "  And  the  Lord's  the  same  now  as  then,  isn't  He  ? " 
Martha  wound  up  crushingly.  "  You  ask,  your  grandfather 
that." 

The  courage  to  launch  this  counter-attack  never  came  to  her, 
however,  and  henceforward  she  and  her  grandfather  lived  in  that 
kindly  toleration  of  each  other's  folly  which  comes  from  holding 
the  proofs  of  it,  yet  letting  sleeping  dogmas  lie.  What  after  all 
was  the  old  man's  obduracy.  Jinny  told  herself,  but  part  of  the 
perverseness  and  obstinacy  of  age  ?  The  fact  that  she  now 
never  needed  either  doctors  or  elders  saved  her  from  any  personal 
problem.  Such  waverings  as  she  had  felt  at  fifteen  were  not 
towards  Wesleyanism,  but  towards  Martha's  mushroom  doctrine. 


96  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

The  texts  of  this  convert  to  the  latest  thing  in  creeds  were  cer- 
tainly staggering,  and  her  scorn  for  the  still  unconverted,  sublime. 
*'  We  don't  take  some  bits  o'  the  Word  and  leave  others."  That 
was  an  argument  not  easy  to  answer,  and  the  bits  now  exhumed 
in  support  of  Christadelphianism  by  the  tireless  discoverer  of 
King  Asa  were  ever  accumulating.  Fortunately  Jinny  was  far 
too  busy  for  religious  discussions  or  doubts,  and  the  "  angel 
mother,"  softly  hovering,  made  a  restful  background  for  the  one 
true  Faith. 

VI 

And  a  sensational  episode  in  the  history  of  the  local  Brethren 
came  to  strengthen  the  sect  as  well  as  to  add  to  the  number  of 
Jinny's  homes  :  came  too,  at  the  very  crisis  when  the  impossibility 
of  carrying  the  Carrier  with  her  through  the  coming  winter 
threatened  to  leave  her  stranded  alone  at  "  The  Black  Sheep  " 
during  the  midday  rest  at  Chipstone.  It  would  have  been  easy 
enough  in  summer  to  sit  in  her  cart  in  the  courtyard  munching 
her  bread  and  cheese,  while  Methusalem  was  lost  in  his  nosebag, 
and  clients  were  coming  with  commissions,  but  the  parcel-shed 
had  no  stove,  and  to  wait  in  the  bar  or  taproom  or  even  the 
parlour — all  alike  masculine  haunts  where  one  could  hardly 
dump  the  "  scarecrow  "  or  swain-chaser  beside  one — was  not  a 
pleasant  prospect. 

Jinny's  and  the  Brotherhood's  good  fortune  began — such  are 
the  ways  of  Providence — ^with  the  death  of  the  landlord. 

Mother  Gander — so  everybody  called  Jeff  Gander's  buxom 
spouse — had  fought  like  a  lioness  to  save  him.  "  Not  a  doctor 
for  miles  around,"  as  the  paralysed  old  Bundock  put  it  trium- 
phantly from  his  bed-of-all-news,  "  but  she  carted  him  over,  and 
set  'em  all  consulting  and  quarrelling.  There  was  two  from 
London,  one  of  'em  a  bart,  and  all  wasted.  Charlie  the  potboy, 
as  he  was  then,  feelingly  told  my  boy,  the  postman,  that  he 
could  ha'  set  up  a  public-house  with  the  fees.  Not  that  I  approve 
o'  public-houses,  but  leastways  they  give  you  more  waluable 
drinks  than  doctors  does.  And  when  poor  Jeff  was  gone,  and 
Mother  Gander  was  carrying  on  like  crazy,  comes  the  Parson  and 
tells  her  'tis  the  Lord's  will. 

"  '  Then  if  it's  the  Lord's  will,'  says  she,  like  lightning,  for  she 
was  always  quick  in  the  uptake,  '  why  do  you  run  down  the 
Peculiars  as  just  begs  the  Lord  to  alter  His  will,  instead  o'  throw- 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  97 

ing  their  hard-earned  gold  to  the  doctors  ?  '  That  was  the  way 
her  eyes  opened  to  the  Truth,  and  she  learnt  how  to  save  her 
soul  as  well  as  her  money." 

The  Peculiars,  they  often  lamented,  were  "  not  strong  enough  " 
in  Chipstone  :  they  looked  yearningly  "  over  the  water  " — to 
Rochford  where  the  great  Banyard  himself  was  prophesying  ;  or 
to  Woodham  where  no  less  than  five  hundred  Brethren  and  Sisters 
fevered  themselves  in  a  hall  too  small  for  the  throngs  that  sought 
admission.  But  their  own  meetings,  though,  if  we  may  trust  Caleb, 
"  noice  things  were  brought  out,"  were  numerically  disheartening. 
The  capture  of  "  The  Black  Sheep  " — a  hostelry  to  which  all  social 
roads  radiated — was  thus  an  event  of  considerable  importance. 

Nevertheless  the  dismay  of  the  Gongregationalists,  of  whose 
community  Mother  Gander  was  a  fallen  pillar,  was  not  counter- 
poised in  jubilation  by  the  Brethren.  For  if  a  stronghold  had 
been  captured,  the  devil  had  not  been  dispossessed.  Mother 
Gander  doffed  her  gold  chain,  but  Sister  Gander  gave  no  sign  of 
emptying  her  liquor  into  the  gutters,  and  to  be  proud  of  a  con- 
vert against  whose  establishment  you  have  to  admonish  one 
another  is  not  simple.  The  Peculiars  managed  it,  however,  after 
some  heart-searching.  It  was  true  old  Bundock  had  been  wont 
to  make  great  play  with  Banyard's  declaration — universally 
admired  as  a  gem  of  humour — "  If  you  want  to  get  me  to  a 
public-house,  you'll  have  to  take  a  horse  and  hook  me."  But 
after  all.  Elder  Mawhood  pointed  out,  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  was 
far  more  than  a  public-house :  as  the  headquarters  for  the  mail- 
coach  it  was  part  of  the  constitution  of  the  country,  and  it  was 
better  for  the  farmers  to  eat  their  ordinary  under  a  God-fearing 
roof — even  if  they  would  drink  with  it — than  for  the  profits  of 
[  their  custom  to  go  to  a  rival  house  which  would  contribute  no 
farthing  to  the  Brethren's  treasury.  It  was  Brother  Flynt, 
however,  who  supplied  the  finest  soothing-powder.  "  Oi  used  to 
[  condemn  myself,"  he  said,  ''but  'twasn't  no  good.  You  must 
;  drink  when  you're  harvestin'.  Don't,  you'll  be  drippin'  as  you 
I:  goo."  If  he  did  not  drink  now  that  his  harvesting  days  were 
^  over,  that  did  not  prove  other  drinkers  were  wicked.  You  had 
to  consider  circumstances.  And  playing  the  Sancho  Panza  still 
more  unexpectedly,  he  hinted  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as 
over-zeal.  "  They  used  to  call  me  a  Banyard  as  a  revilin'  word, 
them  as  made  fun  of  us,  but  to  tell  the  truth  Oi've  never  got  out 
o'  my  warm  bed  in  the  middle  o'  the  noight  to  pray  as  he  exhorted 


98  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

— ^leastways,  not  in  winter.  We've  got  to  be  thankful  for  Sister 
Gander,  and  not  expect  her  to  goo  all  the  way  at  the  start.  She 
don't  want  to  lose  her  business  as  well  as  her  husband." 

But  it  appeared  that  Mother  Gander  did  not  want  to  go 
without  a  husband  either.  She  suddenly,  and  before  her  year 
of  mourning  was  up,  married  Charley  Mott,  the  aforesaid  potboy, 
not  half  her  age,  and  this  was  a  fresh  upset  for  the  Brethren, 
modified  only  by  the  conversion  of  Charley.  The  Congrega- 
tionalists  took  the  opportunity  to  give  the  couple  "  rough  music," 
and  the  whok  neighbourhood  joined  in  with  kettles  and  pokers. 
Brother  Bundock  from  his  omniscient  bed  at  first  proclaimed  the 
scandal  as  a  divine  chastisement  on  his  Brethren  for  having 
failed  to  "  admonish "  her  to  give  up  purveying  "  beer  and 
'bacca  " — he  himself  would  have  dared  it,  he  declared  without 
fear  of  contradiction,  had  he  only  had  his  legs — but  finally,  when 
the  storm  blew  over,  he  would  relate  with  gusto  how  she  had 
weathered  it. 

"  What  with  hating  us  and  hating  her  marriage  and  hating  the 
new  landlord  with  his  jackanip's  airs,  they  quit  her,  nearly  all 
her  customers,  and  them  as  was  faithful  looked  askance  at  her 
between  the  drinks.  So  she  oils  with  her  silks  and  on  with  her 
apron  and  vip  with  her  sleeves,  and  back  to  the  kitchen  !  She'd 
been  poor  Jeff's  cook,  you  know,  in  the  long,  long  ago,  and  'twas 
her  steak  and  kidney  puddens  and  her  gravies  and  sauces  that 
he  married,  and  now  she  was  back  at  the  old  game.  WTiether 
'twas  partly  to  escape  the  sour  looks  that  she  burrowed  in  her 
kitchen  or  whether  the  whole  thing  was  female  artfulness  I  don't 
pretend  to  say,  but  in  two  months  she'd  cooked  'em  all  back 
again.  Don't  come  in  good  time,  you  couldn't  get  a  chair  at 
the  ordinary  for  all  the  tips  at  Chipstone,  and  my  boy,  the 
postman,  he  told  me  he  hears  everybody  joking  over  the  rhubarb 
tart  and  saying  as  the  Lord's  will  is  best.  And  she  never  come 
out  o'  that  kitchen  till  she'd  cooked  it  all  down." 

It  was  during  the  dark  interval  that  Jinny  and  Sister  Mott 
alias  Mother  Gander  were  first  drawn  together,  the  girl  being 
summoned  to  the  kitchen  to  receive  instructions  for  such  pur- 
chases from  local  tradesmen  as  the  lady-hermit  found  indis- 
pensable yet  dreaded  to  make  in  person.  The  fact  that  the  little 
carrier  was  of  the  despised  sect  cemented  the  relationship. 
Jinny  passed  her  midday  respite  in  the  warm  kitchen,  even 
sharing  the  cook's  meal.     And  when  at  last  Sister  Mott  resumed 


JINNY  AT  HER  HOMES  99 

her  blue  silk  bodice  and  faced  her  tradesmen  and  her  customers, 
new  and  old,  the  run  of  the  kitchen  and  the  freedom  of  the  joint 
remained  gratuitous  to  .the  lucky  Jinny.  Here  under  the  great 
bacon-hung  oak  beams  of  the  ancient  apartment,  before  a  huge 
fire  mirroring  itself  rosily  in  the  copper  pans  and  skillets,  she 
could  sit  thawing  her  toes  beside  the  clanking  smokejack,  while 
the  v\dnd  howled  through  the  arch  of  the  sleety  courtyard. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WILL  ON  HIS  WAY 

Permit  me  oj  these  unknown  lands  f  inquire, 

Lands  never  tilVd,  where  thou  hast  wandering  been. 
And  ail  the  marvels  thou  hast  heard  and  seen  : 
Do  tell  me  something  oJ  the  miseries  felt 
In  climes  where  travellers  freeze,  and  where  they  melt. 

Crabbe,  "  Tales  of  the  Hall." 


The  coach  from  railhead  to  Chipstone  was  an  hour  and  a  half 
late,  and  not  all  the  flourish  of  its  horn  as  it  thundered  into  the 
courtyard  of  "  The  Black  Sheep  '•'  could  disguise  the  fact.  Not 
that  it  was  the  fault  of  the  coach  :  it  had  waited  for  the  mail 
train,  and  this,  for  those  parts,  parvenu  monster  had  found  an 
obstruction  on  the  line,  and  was  helpless  to  go  round  it,  as  the 
driver  and  the  guard  complacently  pointed  out.  Their  glory 
and  their  tips  were  shrunk  like  their  circuit — unchanged  along 
the  short  route,  they  could  no  longer  prod  the  slumbering 
traveller  with  insinuatory  farewells :  they  knew  themselves, 
these  Chipstone  worthies,  a  last  lingering  out-of-the-way  survival 
of  the  old  order,  doomed  like  the  broad  coaching  road  and  the 
old  hostelries  to  decay  ;  already  they  had  seen  the  horned  guard 
decline  in  places  to  the  omnibus  cad,  even  as  the  ancient 
"  shooter  "  of  highwaymen  had  sunk  to  the  key-bugler  ;  yet 
they  preserved  the  grand  manner  before  the  revolution  that  was 
deposing  them — the  Tom  Pratt  and  Dick  Burrage  of  a  generation 
of  travellers — and  while  dispensing  their  conversation  like 
decorations  and  drinking  your  health  as  a  concession,  they 
retailed  with  gloomy  satisfaction  every  railway  colHsion  and 
holocaust,  as  though  coaches  never  overturned,  and  declared  the 
English  breed  of  horses  would  be  ruined.  And  when  certain  lines 
set  up  third-class  carriages  they  denounced  the  cruelty  of  packing 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  loi 

the  poor  in  roofless,  seatless  trucks,  as  though  they  themselves 
had  never  brought  into  port  frost-bitten  peers  or  dames  sodden 
through  their  oilskin  umbrellas. 

But  to-day  "  Powerful  warrum "  was  the  grumble  of  the 
passengers,  even  of  those  on  the  roof,  the  majority  being — thus 
early  in  May — still  smothered  in  box-coats  ;  as  for  the  unfor- 
tunates compressed  inside,  who  had  likewise  not  yet  cast  a  clout, 
and  had  similarly  mistrusted  the  sunshiny  spell  with  which  that 
pouring  April  had  ended,  they  mopped  their  brows  and  cursed 
the  fickle  British  climate.  But  though  the  sun  had  suddenly 
become  hot  enough  to  sour  milk,  it  could  not  sour  the  temper  of 
the  bronzed  young  man — his  face  nigh  as  ruddy  as  his  hair — 
who  sat  on  the  box-seat  and  conversed  with  Tom  Pratt  almost 
as  an  equal.  Even  the  long  delay  on  the  line  had  left  him 
unruffled,  thanks  largely  to  the  blue-eyed  girl  in  the  train  who 
before  his  clean-shaven  cosmopolitan  air  had  shown  signs  of 
tenderness,  and  whose  address  his  purse  now  held — more  precious 
than  a  fiver.  Verily  a  pleasant  change  after  the  Eveless  back- 
blocks  of  Canada. 

And  the  idea  of  calling  this  "  warrum  "  !  He  smiled  to  think 
of  the  hells  he  had  known — Montreal  with  mosquitoes,  New  York 
in  a  damp  heat.  Why,  this  couldn't  even  melt  a  man's  collar. 
And  how  refreshing  was  the  trimness  of  the  Essex  countryside—* 
the  comfortable  air  of  immemorial  cultivation — after  the  giant 
untidiness  of  the  New  World.  How  soothing  these  long,  green, 
white-sprinkled  hedgerows  with  their  ancient  elms,  this  old, 
historic  highway  with  thatch  and  tile,  steeple  and  tower,  after 
the  corduroy  roads  of  round  logs  or  the  muddy,  dusty,  sandy 
tracks.  How  adorable  these  creeper-covered  cottages  after  log- 
cabins  in  backwoods  ;  rotting  floors  on  rotten  sleepers  and  the 
mud  paste  fallen  out  of  the  walls.  He  forgot  that  it  was  predsely 
this  that  he  had  fled  from  nearly  a  decade  ago — this  dead, 
walled-in  life,  so  petty  and  pietistic — and  he  congratulated 
himself  afresh  on  the  wisdom  of  that  abrupt  resolution  to  sell  his 
clearing  to  a  second-hand  pioneer  and  to  farm  at  home  with  the 
profits. 

His  clothes  alone  would  have  kept  him  in  good  humour.  Not 
only  were  the  heavier  in  what  he  had  learned  to  call  his  trunk, 
but  those  on  his  back  were  the  first  he  had  ever  had  made  to 
measure.  And  they  were  made  '•  too — -I'ke  rthe  tieckcloth  and 
shawl  and  fal-lals  he  was  bringing  tb  hi3  'pa-reiltS  "  from  America  " 


102  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

— by  the  world-famous  firm  of  "  Moses  &  Son  "  (opposite  Aldgate 
Church),  whose  imposingness  was  enhanced  in  his  eyes  by 
finding  it — on  the  Saturday  he  first  hied  thither — haughtily 
aloof  :  a  blank  wilderness  of  shutters  in  a  roaring  world,  with 
no  gleam  through  their  chinks  from  the  seven  hundred  gas- 
burners.  But  he  had  finally  stormed  the  "  Private  Hall," 
toiling — as  invited  by  rhyme — up  "  the  stairs  of  solid  oak,"  and 
had  gained  the  heights  "  where  orders  were  bespoke,"  and  there 
— in  that  rich-carpeted  "  showroom  with  the  giant  chandelier," 
in  a  setting  of  Corinthian  columns,  sculptured  panels,  and 
arabesque  ceilings — dark  enchanters  with  tape-measures  like 
serpents  over  their  shoulders  hati  made  obeisance  to  him  and 
enfolded  him  with  their  coils.  Even  his  billycock  hat  verified 
the  bardic  boast : 

There's  not  another  Hat-mart  in  the  town 
Which  casts  such  lustre  on  the  human  crown. 

Left  to  himself  he  would  have  liked  a  wideawake,  but  that 
arbiter  elegantiarum^  the  small  boy,  he  was  warned,  had  not  quite 
acquiesced  in  that.  If  it  was  not  a  coat  of  many  buttons  that 
he  now  sported,  it  was  scrimp  enough  to  show  off  the  fine  lines 
of  his  figure  ;  for  the  movement  towards  ample  waistcoats  and 
wide  trousers  was  not  yet  encouraged  by  his  Aldgate  mentors, 
and  pockets  on  the  hips  had  been  conceded  him  with  reluctance. 
In  his  large  American  trunk  reposed  a  still  grander  suit  of  Sunday 
sable,  though  he  had  shied  at  a  frock  coat,  and  was  glad  to  learn 
from  these  hierophants  of  the  mode  that  morning  jackets  were 
no  longer  confined  to  the  stable-yard  or  the  barrack-room,  but 
were  permissible  even  in  the  country  house — and  there  was  no 
question  but  Frog  Farm  was  that.  He  had  already  worn  his 
blacks  once,  on  his  visit  to  the  Great  Exhibition,  and  they  made, 
he  found,  a  distinct  difference  to  the  policemen  in  top-hats 
whose  guidance  he  sought  in  the  labyrinths  of  the  metropolis. 

The  delay  in  this  visit  to  the  Exhibition — the  goal  of  his 
journey  to  London — had  turned  out  an  advantage,  he  felt,  giving 
him  time  for  these  measured  elegancies.  If  he  had  been 
unable  to  be  in  at  the  opening,  as  he  had  .grandly  designed  in 
Canada  when  ignorant  that  this  involved  guineas  and  season- 
tickets,  he  had  managed  to  squeeze  for  a  glimpse  of  the  Queen 
outside  if  :not' inside  the  P^rk^  and  the  first  five-shilling  day — 
after  all,  only'  the-  fduft!>-Myas  grandeur  enough  for  a  whilom 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  103 

ploughboy  and  cabin-boy.  Although  nine  ten-pound  notes  made 
a  warm  waistcoat-lining,  he  was  not  under  the  illusion  that  he 
had  returned  with  more  than  a  competence. 

One  would  have  thought  London  itself  a  Greater  Exhibition 
to  a  young  man  who  had  never  seen  it  before  :  especially  London 
at  carnival  with  its  colossal  crowds  swollen  by  visitors  from  all 
countries  in  all  complexions  and  costumes  :  London  with  its 
'numberless  gay  'buses  (plying  mostly  to  Hyde  Park),  its  swifter 
gliding  cabriolets  of  the  new  pattern  invented  by  Mr.  Hansom, 
and  the  more  stolid  procession  of  four-wheeled  clarences,  not  to 
mention  the  fashionable  and  civic  carriages  with  the  scarlet-and- 
gold  pomp  of  flunkeys  and  outriders  :  London  with  its  countless 
curious  street-criers,  costermongers,  ballad-mongers,  watercress 
sellers,  muffin  and  hot-pie  men,  birdcage  dealers,  tract-peddling 
Lascars  in  white  robes,  and  vendors  of  everything  from  corn- 
salves  to  speeches  on  the  scaffold  ;  blowsy,  rowdy  London  that 
turned  into  a  dream-city  when  those  strange  figures  with  rods 
glided  through  the  twilight,  flecking  the  long,  grey  streets  with 
points  of  fire. 

But  though  Will  Flynt  was  not  insensitive  to  these  fascinating 
phenomena,  and  even  rode  about  recklessly  in  the  cabriolets  at 
eightpence  a  mile,  yet  London  had  not  the  spell  to  hold  him. 
Only  the  Great  Exhibition  had  drawn  him  across  the  Atlantic. 
While  awaiting  impatiently  for  the  five-shilling  day,  he  duly  did 
the  Tower  and  the  Zoo  (sixpence  extra  for  Mr.  Gould's  humming- 
birds in  the  twenty-five  glass  cases),  paid  twopence  to  go  into 
St.  Paul's,  and  a  shilling  to  see  the  Great  Globe  in  Leicester 
Square,  patronized  Phelps  at  Sadler's  Wells,  and  the  horses  at 
xA.stley's,  had  a  peep  at  Vauxhall,  enjoyed  "  Rush,  the  Norwich 
Murderer,"  at  Madame  Tussaud's,  and  submitted  the  boots  these 
operations  begrimed  to  the  red-coated  shoeblacks  of  the  Ragged 
Schools — London's  new  word  in  philanthropy.  But  though  he 
liked  the  quarter  in  which  his  quaint  galleried  hotel,  "  The 
Flower  Pot,"  was  situated,  with  the  Spitalfields  Market  and  the 
tall  old  houses  of  the  silk-weavers,  whose  vast  casements  with 
their  little  panes  rose  story  on  story,  he  was  no  sooner  through 
with  the  visit  to  the  Exhibition  than  without  a  day's  delay — as 
promised  in  that  letter  to  Martha — he  took  train  and  coach  to 
Little  Bradmarsh. 

Beholding  him  thus  on  the  County  Flyer  hurrying  towards 
Frog  Farm,  after  only  a  single  visit  to^the  stupendous  spectacle, 


104  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

one  may  suspect  that  he  did  not  know  his  own  heart  as  well  as 
he  imagined.  But  he  himself  had  no  doubt  of  the  magnet  he 
obeyed,  and  he  had  found  on  his  boat  not  a  few  rich  Canadians — 
and  the  Dominion  already  boasted  four  thousand  carriage-folk — - 
who  confessed  to  have  yielded  to  the  same  irresistible  attraction. 
There  was  indeed  little  else  talked  of  on  the  voyage  :  even  the 
wonders  of  the  boat  itself — a  new  Yankee  iron  and  screw  steamer 
of  nearly  two  thousand  tons  and  quite  five  hundred  horse-power 
that  brought  them  to  Liverpool  in  eleven  days  from  Halifax, 
and  had  spittoons  and  wedding-berths  like  the  Yankee  river- 
steamers,  and  to  see  which  the  Liverpudlians  had  flocked  with 
their  sixpences — paling  before  the  world-marvel  awaiting  them 
in  London. 

And  London  itself  was  talking  of  it  no  less  :  for  once  London 
was  staggered.  And  if  London  was  thus  shaken,  how  much 
more  the  provinces  and  the  world  at  large  ?  Did  not  indeed  the 
flags  of  all  nations  wave  over  the  great  glass  building,  whose 
mere  material  would  have  been  enough  to  set  the  globe  agog, 
even  if  it  had  not  contained  contributions  from  every  corner  of 
civilization  except  Germany,  which  in  that  antediluvian  age 
figured  in  the  catalogue  only  as  "  The  States  of  the  ZoUverein." 
What  wonder  if  with  all  the  excursions  and  alarums  and  millen- 
nial visions  that  attended  its  birth,  the  Press  reeking  with 
paragraphs,  poems,  discussions,  wrangles,  skits,  prophecies,  and 
forebodings,  crowds  equal  to  the  population  of  provincial  towns 
gathered  at  the  Park  to  watch  it  rise,  and  to  stare  at  the  end- 
lessly inrolling  vans  and  the  sappers  and  miners  at  work  in 
their  uniforms.  One  M.P. — military  and  moustachio'd — won  the 
immortality  of  the  comic  prints  by  fulminating  against  the 
invasion  of  Freethinking  foreigners  who  would  pillage  London 
and  ruin  the  honour  of  British  womanhood  :  more  sober  minds 
feared  the  Chartist  mobs  and  the  Red  Republicans  :  even  the 
Catholics,  already  flaunting  their  cardinals  and  ringing  their 
unhallowed  church  bells,  would  profit  by  the  Continental  wave. 
The  House  of  Lords  resounded  with  protests  and  petitions 
against  the  profanation  of  the  Park,  and  apprehensions  as  to  the 
fate  of  the  building  erected  therein  were  equally  rife  :  the  great 
glass  roof  would  be  splintered  by  hailstones,  the  walls  would  be 
overturned  by  the  wind,  the  galleries  would  collapse  under  the 
swarming  multitudes,  and  Anarchism  would  seize  its  opportunity 
amid  the  dismantled  treasures  of  the  globe.     But  one  unfailing 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  105 

factor  was  on  the  Exhibition's  side  :  the  scheme  was  attacked 
by  the  Times,  And  so  Paxton's  building  rose  steadily  till  the 
great  day  when  through  an  avenue  of  three-quarters  of  a  million 
spectators  the  Queen  and  "  that  Queen's  indefatigable  husband  " 
— as  a  panegyrist  of  the  period  put  it — drove  to  declare  it  open 
to  the  elect  thirty  thousand  who  had  already  found  it  so,  while 
through  glittering  nave  and  transept,  with  their  fountains,  trees, 
flowers,  and  statues,  the  "  Hallelujah  Chorus  "  thundered  from 
a  thousand  voices,  two  hundred  orchestral  instruments,  and  a 
dozen  giant  organs  ;  and  the  millennial  hope  welled  up  in  a 
grand  climax  of  universal  emotion.  And  hoary  grandsires 
should  hereafter  tell — proclaimed  the  poet  of  the  Great  Catalogue 
— ^what  in  this  famous  century  befell  :  grey  Time  should  chronicle 
the  victories  gained,  since  Mercy  o'er  the  world  and  Justice 
reigned  : 

W^hat  time  the  Crystal  Hall  sent  forth  her  dove 
And  signed  the  League  of  Universal  Love. 

But  although  our  Canadian  pioneer  had  thus  ample  excuse  for 
the  unrest  that  forbade  him  to  miss  this  Messianic  spectacle,  it 
was  not — even  he  would  have  admitted — the  Great  Exhibition 
which  had  first  unsettled  his  stolid  labours.  That  oscillation 
had  been  communicated  some  two  years  earlier,  and  by  a  shock 
that  had  set  the  New  World  rattling  even  more  noisily  than  the 
Old  was  shaken  by  the  Great  Exhibition.  The  discovery  of  gold 
in  California  was  a  seismic  vibration  that  depopulated  Eastern 
towns,  shot  sober  lawyers  into  wagons,  sent  clergymen  flying 
along  mule-trails,  swept  timid  tradesmen  across  the  foodless  and 
robber-haunted  Rocky  Mountains,  whirled  schoolmasters  fifteen 
I  thousand  miles  round  Cape  Horn,  and  dumped  them  all  waist- 
high  in  auriferous  mud  and  shimmering  water,  to  be  fed  by 
Indian  squaws.  It  was  under  the  lure  of  the  Californian  legend 
that  Will  had  originally  looked  about  for  a  purchaser  of  his 
cleared  acres.  But  by  the  time  the  farm  was  off  his  hands,  the 
.glamour  of  easy  gold  had  faded,  and  with  a  sum  in  his  pockets 
mfficient  for  a  little  respite,  life  seemed  suddenly  larger  than 
bcre,  and  he  found  himself  possessed  by  a  strange  craving  riot 
:o  be  away  from  the  old  country  in  that  year  of  years — the  year 
►f  the  Great  Exhibition. 


io6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

II 

Chipstone  had  seemed  strangely  shrivelled  as  the  County 
Flyer  tore  through  it ;  the  High  Street  unexpectedly  narrow 
and  the  great,  gorgeous  shops,  against  whose  panes  he  had 
flattened  his  youthful  nose,  curioiftsly  small  and  drab,  with 
diminutive  sun-bHnds  ;  yet  the  quaint,  blistered  bulge  of  the  old 
timbered  houses  was  fascinatingly  as  he  remembered  it,  and 
when  the  spirited  quartet  of  tinkling  steeds  slackened  under  the 
archway  crowned  by  the  ironwork  sign  of  "  The  Black  Sheep," 
he  saw  through  a  warm  dimness  that  the  ancient  inn  still  gave 
on  the  stable-yard  with  this  same  Tudor  bulge,  and  that  the 
courtyard  itself  was  little  less  rambling  than  the  picture  he 
carried  in  his  memory.  There  was  the  same  mass-meeting  of 
cocks  crowing  on  the  same  golden  dunghill,  the  same  litter  of 
barrels,  boxes,  baskets,  and  parcels  of  laundry-work,  while  the 
gardens  of  the  whitewashed  old  cottages  backing  the  black- 
tarred  stables  and  cartsheds  seemed  caught  up  as  incongruously 
as  ever  in  the  horsey  medley.  Why,  there  was  the  very  shed 
which  had  sheltered  the  farm-wagon  the  Sunday  he  was  to  drive 
it  to  Harwich.  And  there — yes,  actually  there  on  the  same 
doorstep,  under  the  same  hanging  ironwork  lamp,  was  Ostler 
Joe,  the  shambling,  bottle-nosed  hunchback,  whose  figure — in  its 
reassurance  of  stability — struck  him  as  positively  beautiful,  and 
whose  head  seemed  aureoled  by  the  mist.  But  where  was  that 
more  expected  face,  where  was  the  hair-swathed  visage  of  Caleb 
Flynt  ?  Brushing  the  mist  from  his  eyes,  he  looked  anxiously 
round  the  seething,  sun-drenched  courtyard.  "  Hullo,  Joey,"  he 
said  at  last.  "  Wouldn't  my  dad  wait  ?  "  It  was  a  pleasant 
voice  with  something  of  a  twang  :  but  the  twang  was  no  longer 
local. 

"  Oi  dunno  your  feyther  from  Adam,"  said  Joe  cheerfully, 
mopping  his  face  with  his  shirt-sleeve. 

"  Yes,  you  do — old  Mr.  Flynt — Frog  Farm." 

Joe  shook  his  head — it  seemed  no  longer  a  saint's.  "  Oi  never 
heerd  nobody  mention  Frog  Farm  nowadays.  It's  a  dead  place.'^ 
He  shambled  off  on  his  many  tasks  with  an  aliveness  that 
tightened  the  contraction  Will  felt  at  his  heart.     His  father  dead  ? 

"  But  look  here,  Joe  !  "  He  pursued  the  factotum.  "  You 
remember  me — little  Will  Flynt  ?  " 

"  Can't  say  as  Oi  does — moind  that  box  now." 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  107 

"  It's  my  box— r-and  I  wrote  to  dad  to  meet  me  with  a  trap. 
Guess  he  got  tired  of  fooHng  around." 

"  There's  warious  traps."  The  hunchback  waved  a  busy 
hand. 

"  No — he's  not  here.     And  how  am  I  to  get  my  trunk  home  ?  " 

"  Bradmarsh  carrier  goos  at  three — you're  in  kick." 

He  heaved  a  parcel  now  into  a  driverless  tilt-cart,  where  a 
little  white  dog  boisterously  mounted  guard.  "  That's  'er !  "  he 
said.     "  Take  you  too  if  you're  smart." 

"  Daniel  Quarles  !  "  A  fresh  wave  of  reassurance  radiated 
from  that  old  household  word  on  the  familiar  tilt.  So  the 
venerable  carrier  was  still  plying,  how  then  could  the  compara- 
tively juvenile  Caleb  be  extinct  ?  The  May  Day  ribbons  not 
removed  from  Daniel's  horse,  and  making  it  a  snow-white  steed 
from  fairyland,  dispelled  the  last  funereal  images.  Surely  had 
Caleb  Flynt  really  died,  old  Quarles  would  never  have  left  so 
lively  a  topic  untapped  -with  Joey. 

But  here  Will's  meditations  were  agreeably  cut  short  by 
another  vision  from  auld  lang  syne- — the  laced  mob-cap  and 
blonde  kiss-curls  of  Mother  Gander,  to  whom  Dick  Burrage  was 
gloating  over  the  train's  misadventure.  There  were  pouches 
under  the  blue  eyes,  and  no  gold  chain  now  heaved  mth  her  blue 
silk  bosom  :  otherwise  she  was  her  old  comely  self.  But  fresh 
from  his  grand  hotel  in  Spital  Square,  Will  no  longer  regarded  her 
as  an  awful  and  aristocratic  personage,  able  to  eat  meat  at  every 
meal.  An  easy  accost  and  inquiry  about  the  old  Flynts  of  Frog 
Farm  brought  him  soothing  information.  Lord  bless  his  soul, 
people  living  a  healthy  life  like  that  never  died — unless  they  took 
medicine.  She  couldn't  say  they  had  been  to  chapel  lately — 
indeed  she  had  gathered  from  the  postman  that  the  old  wife  had 
taken  up  with  some  New  Jerusalem  crankiness.  "  But  you'll 
find  the  Bradmarsh  carrier  in  the  parcel-shed — that  black  one. 
You  ask  her  !  "  And  with  a  wave  towards  the  arch  she  turned 
again  to  the  beaming  Dick  Burrage. 

Will  thought  the  "  her  "  referred  to  a  chambermaid  who  was 
just  passing,  but  he  saw  no  need  of  such  guidance — the  parcel- 
shed  was  obvious  enough.  His  mind  was  occupied  with  the  odd 
fact  that  Mother  Gander  had  apparently  become  a  sister  in  the 
spirit  to  his  own  father,  while  his  mother  had  moved  on  to  another 
eccentric  doctrine.  Ah  well,  changes  were  bound  to' come.  Not 
everybody  could  be  of  the  same  immutable  granite  as  himself. 


io8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

He  found  the  parcel-shed  deserted  save  for  a  young  girl  who, 
busily  heaping  up  parcels  into  the  willing  arms  of  Joey,  did  not 
even  look  up.  Somewhat  depressed  by  the  chapel-memories  the 
landlady  had  conjured  up,  he  stood  a  moment,  absently  watching 
the  operation,  and  wondering  why  the  agreeably  pretty  creature 
should  be  dispatching  so  many  parcels — wedding-cake  came  into 
his  mind,  though  the  oddly  varying  shape  of  the  parcels  was  not 
consistent  with  the  hypothesis.  He  would  willingly  have  loitered 
—the  chapel-cloud  was  dissipating — but  the  carrier  was  clearly 
not  here,  and,  as  the  church  clock  opposite  was  booming  three,  he 
was  afraid  old  Daniel  might  be  starting  off  without  him,  so  he 
hurried  back  to  the  pranked  and  pawing  steed,  only  to  find 
himself  derided  and  defied  by  the  little  dog,  which  he  now 
observed  was  also  adorned  with,  a  May  Day  bow. 

And  then  he  remembered  he  was  hungry.  The  block  on  the 
line  had  robbed  him  of  his  dinner,  and  he  wondered  whether  to 
go  off  with  that  grim  Gaffer  Quarles  would  be  so  enjoyable  as 
walking — after  a  square  meal.  No,  why  should  he  be  thus 
whisked  oil  ?  Why  not  a  leisurely  spread  at  "  The  Black 
Sheep  "  preceded  by  another  glimpse  of  the  girl  in  the  shed,  and 
then  a  long  stroll  home  by  the  dear  old  field-paths,  through 
Plashy  Walk  and  Swash  End,  dry  enough,  doubtless  under  this 
sun  ?  Besides,  his  slow  old  parent  might  be  on  the  way  after 
all — there  was  no  certainty  the  carrier  with  his  compulsory 
windings  and  detours  would  not  miss  him.  Yes,  it  would  be 
kinder  to  his  father  to  give  him  another  hour  or  so.  "  The  May 
Queen  "  he  murmured  to  the  air,  brooding  over  Methusalem's 
belated  ribbons.  Yes,  they  would  surely  have  made  her  that ; 
though  perhaps  the  old  custom  was  no  longer  kept  up.  True, 
she  hadn't  the  blue  eyes  or  the  plumpness  of  the  girl  in  the  train, 
and  was  not  stately  enough  for  a  queen — though  of  course  you 
couldn't  really  tell  how  Victoria  looked  outside  her  royal  carriage. 
But  then  you  couldn't  imagine  the  blue-eyed  minx  in  a  royal 
carriage  at  all :  you  placed  her  smiling  behind  bars,  manipulating 
beer-handles. 

"  It's  all  right,"  Joey  startled  him  by  announcing,  toppling 
his  tower  of  parcels  into  the  cart.  "  Oi've  made  inquirations. 
The  old  Flynt  chap  be  aloive  and  kickin'." 

"  Oh,  thank  you."  Will's  last  shade  of  uneasiness  vanished.  He 
slipped  a  sixpence  into  Joey's  palm.  "  Put  my  box  in — I'm  not 
going  myself — say  it's  for  Frog  Farm."     And  he  jostled  back  to 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  109 

the  parcel-shed,  through  the  bustle  of  boxes  and  jangling  of  bells, 
barging  into  other  carriers  from  other  circuits,  stumbling  over 
dogs  that  yelped,  tangling  himself  in  the  whip  of  a  postboy  who 
was  frantically  buttoning  his  waistcoat,  and  nearly  run  over  by 
the  great  coach  just  wheeling  round.  He  was  more  disappointed 
than  surprised  when  he  at  last  reached  the  shed  to  find  it  empty, 
though  far  fuller  than  before  of  mere  people.  Still,  there  was 
always  dinner. 

Ill 

But  dinner  was  not  always. 

"  No,  I'm  afraid  it's  all  gone,"  said  Mother  Gander.  She  was 
blocking  the  way  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  where  a  painted  hand 
under  pendent  stag-horns  directed  you  upwards  to  the  "  Parlour  " 
— "  The  Black  Sheep  "  would  have  none  of  your  new-fangled 
"  Coffee  Rooms  " — and  Will  Flynt,  sniffing  up  the  odours  of 
beer,  sand,  tobacco,  gin,  snuff,  and  tallow  like  an  ambrosial  air, 
felt  a  further  elation  in  the  thought  of  its  being  now  a  beckoning 
not  a  monitory  hand  :  to  ascend  to  those  unexplored  heights, 
mysteriously  grand  to  the  boy,  seemed  symbolic  of  his  rise  in 
life. 

"  But  haven't  you  got  ^w^thing  ?  "     His  face  fell. 

"  Nothing  fit  to  offer,"  said  the  landlady. 

"  But  I'm  hungry — and  I've  got  to  wait  here." 

"  You're  not  staying  for  the  night  ?  "  she  queried. 

"  I  may,"  he  said,  to  encourage  her  to  produce  some  food. 

"  Oh,  but  we  haven't  a  room  empty." 

He  reddened.  Was  it  possible  she  recognized  the  hobnailed 
lad  of  yore,  refused  to  serve  him  or  to  allow  him  up  her  aristo- 
cratic stairs  ? 

"  You  haven't  a  room  empty  ?  "  he  repeated  incredulously. 

"  There's  a  poky  garret,"  she  said,  "  and  another  man  would 
have  to  go  through  it  to  his  bedroom,  and  he  goes  to  bed  very 
late  and  gets  up  very  early.  But  even  our  best  rooms  are  stuffy 
and  our  corridors  are  that  dingy  people  are  always  tumbling 
against  the  brooms  the  maids  leave  about ;  when  they're  not 
tumbling  down  the  stairs.  Look  how  steep  they  are  !  The 
whole  house  is  badly  built — it  was  never  meant  for  an  hotel — 
and  the  service  is  disgraceful." 

Will,  overwhelmed,  stammered  out  deprecation  of  her  abuse. 
The  inn  was  most  picturesque,  he  urged,  and  it  was  not  the  fault 


no  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

of  the  house  if  the  coach  was  late  ;  as  for  himself  a  crust  of  bread 
and  cheese  would  suffice  to  stay  his  pangs. 

"  Well,  go  up  and  see  what  you  can  get,"  she  rejoined  scep- 
tically, moving  aside.  Relieved  to  find  the  barrier  raised,  he 
ascended  the  dog-legged  staircase  ;  his  boyish  awe  resurging. 
Alas  !  even  the  landlady's  disparagement  had  not  prepared  him 
for  this  dishevelled  scene — dirty  plates  and  greasy  knives  and 
forks  and  tobacco-stoppers  and  sloppy  pewter  pots  that  had 
stamped  bleary  rims  on  the  fly-haunted  table-cloth,  and  a  waiter 
in  his  shirt-sleeves  dining,  like  a  gentleman,  off  the  ruins. 

"  Wegetables  and  pastry  is  hoff !  '  murmured  this  disturbed 
gentleman. 

Will  was  retreating — bread  and  cheese  at  the  bar  amid  the 
glinting  bottles  and  shining  beer-handles  seemed  more  appetizing 
— but  the  waiter  had  sprung  up,  his  mouth  still  masticating  but 
his  coat  conjured  on,  and  had  him  fixed  instanter  on  a  Windsor 
chair  at  a  clean  little  sun-splashed  table  by  a  side  window  that 
was  refreshingly  open  and  gave  on  the  cheery  courtyard. 

A  cut  of  the  devastated  joint,  strong  mustard  pickles,  a  hunch 
of  good  bread,  a  pint  of  porter  and  the  freedom  of  the  cheese  to 
follow,  soon  dispelled  the  dismalness  of  the  room;  an  effect  to 
which  the  attendant  magician  contributed  more  literally  by  his 
great  trick  of  vanishing  crumbs  and  disappearing  plates,  including 
his  own  half-eaten  meal.  How  good  it  was,  this  cold  roast  beef 
of  old  England,  how  equally  redolent  of  the  dear  old  country 
those  hunting  pictures  on  the  low  wainscoted  walls,  with  all 
their  gay  bravado.  There  were  four  of  them :  ^he  Meet, 
Breaking  Cover,  Full  Cry,  The  Death  ;  all  populous  with  spirited 
pink  gentlemen  and  violently  animated  dogs  and  horses,  culminat- 
ing in  the  leading  dog  tearing  the  fox,  and  the  leading  gentleman 
waving  his  tall  hat  in  rapture.  He  quaffed  voluptuously  at  his 
frothing  pewter  pot.  To  the  Queen  of  the  May — ay,  why  not 
drink  to  her  ? 

"  How's  Mr.  Gander  ?  "  he  asked  irrelevantlv,  with  a  sudden 
image  of  the  bull-necked  landlord  and  his  massive  gold  scarfpin. 

The  waiter — on  the  point  of  disappearing — materialized  himself 
again,  and  stared  at  the  questioner. 

*'  He  ain't  anyhow,"  he  gasped  at  last.  "  At  least  that's  a 
secret  'twixt  him  and  his  Maker." 

"  Dead  ?  "  It  was  Will's  turn  to  gasp.  Could  so  much  gross 
vitality  be  extinct,  or  even  rarefied  ? 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  iii 

"  Dead  and  married  over.  She's  Mrs.  Mott  now,  though  the 
old  customers  will  keep  on  with  the  Mother  Gander,  just  as  I 
have  to  bite  my  tongue  not  to  call  her  husband  Charley."  He 
lowered  his  voice.     "  He  was  the  potboy  once." 

Will  whistled.  "  What  women  are  !  "  was  in  that  knowing 
note.  How  pleasant  it  was  thus  to  discuss — with  beer  and 
pickles  ! — life  and  death  and  the  sex. 

"  Yes,  sir — the  potboy,  and  busting  with  pride  if  I  let  him 
hand  up  the  plates  at  the  Bov/ling  Club  dinner."  A  sigh  accented 
the  cruel  change.     "  You've  been  away,  sir,  I  presoom." 

"  Half  round  the  world,"  said  Will  with  airy  inaccuracy.  "  But 
why  didn't  you  go  in  for  her  ?  " 

"  Me  !  With  my  old  woman  !  Besides  /  wasn't  going  to 
turn  Peculiar — no,  not  for  ten  '  Black  Sheep.'  You've  heard  o' 
Peculiars,  sir  ?  " 

"  Ye-es."     A  cayenne  pod  in  the  pickles  made  him  cough. 

"  Thick  as  blackberries  about  these  parts — and  as  full  of  texts 
as  the  bush  of  prickles."  The  waiter's  voice  sank  again.  "  She 
made  poor  Charley  into  one  of  'em.  He's  got  to  go  to  chapel 
three  times  every  Sunday  and  once  on  Wednesday." 

"  Poor  chap  !  "  There  was  sympathy  as  well  as  mockery  in 
Will's  tone.  "  But  can  you  tell  me  " — ^he  had  a  sudden  remem- 
brance— "  why  she  runs  down  this  place  so  ?  Is  it  her  Peculiar 
conscience  ?  " 

"  Ah  !  I've  heard  others  arx  that  too.  My  opinion  ain't 
worth  a  woman's  tip,  but  I  can't  help  fancying  it's  more  defiance 
than  conscience.  Time  was,  you  see,  sir,  folks  kept  away,  and 
it  sort  o'  soured  her.  I  don't  want  your  rotten  custom,  she  as 
good  as  says  to  all  and  sundry.  Take  it  to  landladies  who've 
arxed  your  permission  to  marry.  And  so  they  come  all  the 
more,  sir,  yes,  and  cringing  to  have  rooms,  and  pays  her  whatever 
she  asks.  There  was  lots  o'  grumbling  in  the  old  days  :  now 
you  never  hear  a  complaint,  except  from  herself.  My  stars,  the 
money  she's  making  !  But  I  can't  say  I  envy  Charley — not  even 
when  he  bullies  me.  Although  in  marriage  if  it's  not  one  cross 
it's  another,  ain't  it,  sir  ?  Or  perhaps  you're  one  o'  the  lucky 
ones." 

"  I'm  not  married  at  all." 

"  That's  what  I  mean."  And  the  waiter  sighed  again.  "  Got 
all  you  want,  sir  ?  " 

"  Everything,  thank  you — not  wanting  a  wife." 


112  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

His  laugh,  gurgling  away  into  his  pewter  pot,  evoked  only  a 
deeper  sigh,  on  which  the  waiter  seemed  wafted  without. 


IV 

Simultaneously — through  the  opening  or  closing  door — some- 
thing was  wafted  within.  Our  complacent  young  man  at  his 
place  in  the  sun,  with  the  glow  of  freedom  at  his  heart  and  of 
porter  at  his  throat,  was  startled  by  something  leaping  on  his 
knees,  which,  autom.atically  fended  and  thrust  away,  was  felt  as 
clinging  claws  scraping  down  his  new  trousers.  Coughing  and 
spluttering,  and  with  the  beery  glow  changing  to  a  choke,  he 
perceived  that  it  was  the  carrier's  little  white  dog,  the  very  same 
that  had  warned  him  off  its  master's  goods  ;  unmistakable  by 
its  pink  bow.  So  the  doddering  patriarch  had  not  yet  started, 
he  thought  lazily,  though  he  must  now  be  back  in  his  cart  or  his 
canine  sentry  would  not  have  gone  off  for  a  farew^ell  prowl.  He 
helped  himself  to  another  cut  of  beef,  and  his  thoughts  wandered 
from  Mother  Gander  to  a  builder's  widow  he  had  known  in  a 
Montreal  boarding-house,  a  widow  to  whom  he  could  certainly 
have  played  the  Charley  had  he  cared  to  go  so  far.  He  seemed 
to  hear  her  foolish  whimpering  the  day  he  left  for  the  backwoods, 
but  he  became  aware  that  it  was  only  the  carrier's  dog  whining. 

It  was  begging  so  prettily  on  its  hind  legs,  looking  so  appeaUng 
in  its  pink  bow,  that  he  was  soon  feeding  it  rather  than  himself, 
and  morsel  after  morsel  fell  to  it,  each  gulped  down  with  such 
celerity  that  from  the  creature's  instantly  renewed  and  unchang- 
ingly pathetic  posture  of  supplication,  an  absent-minded  man 
would  have  doUbted  if  he  had  fed  the  brute  at  all.  But  finally 
the  young  man  pushed  away  his  cheese-plate,  and  dropping  with 
plenary  satisfaction  upon  a  horsehair  and  mahogany  arm-chair 
that  stood  by  the  empty  grate,  he  lit  his  cherrywood  pipe  with  a 
brimstone  match  and  followed  his  springtide  fancies  in  clouds  of 
his  own  making.  Thus  the  second  pounce  of  the  dog  on  to  his 
knees  found  him  acquiescent,  even  caressing,  and  with  a  beatific 
grunt  the  animal  curled  itself  up  as  to  an  seon  of  repose. 

Then  a  horn  sounded,  and  with  a  convulsive  start  the  creature 
was  off  his  lap  and  scratching  and  yapping  at  the  closed  door. 
Will,  too,  had  a  moment  of  wild  wishing  he  had  engaged  a  seat 
in  the  cart — the  thought  of  walking  in  this  heat  was  no  longer 
alluring — but  it  was  equally  unimaginable  to  get  up  now  and 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  113 

rush  like  the  animal.  Besides,  he  hadn't  paid  his  bill,  he  remem- 
bered not  discontentedly.  Meanwhile  the  distracted  little  dog 
had  darted  back  to  the  window  and  leapt  on  the  sill,  but  it  was 
obviously  cowering  before  the  depth  of  the  jump.  He  was 
feeling  he  really  must  get  up  and  do  its  will,  when  to  the  satis- 
faction of  the  slothful  man  and  the  bliss  of  the  active  beast,  the 
door  opened,  and  like  a  streak  of  lightning  the  white  figure  had 
forked  across  the  room  and  vanished.  He  turned  his  head 
lazily  to  the  window  to  see  if  it  would  catch  its  cart,  but  was 
only  in  time  to  see  the  tail-board  with  his  own  box  disappearing 
through  the  archway,  pursued  by  Joe  with  a  belated  bundle. 
Then  the  new-comers  claimed  his  languorous  attention. 

V 

Strictly  speaking,  there  was  only  one  new-comer  and  he  was 
hanging  back  at  the  sight  of  the  London-tailored  guest,  being 
himself  in  moleskins  and  bent  and  fusty,  though  Mother  Gander 
was  clearly  beckoning  him  forward.  "  The'  gentleman's  just 
going,"  she  said  sweetly.  Will  knew  not  whether  to  be  drowsily 
pleased  at  the  status  he  had  achieved  in  his  own  neighbour- 
hood, or  sluggishly  wrathful  at  this  renewed  attempt  to  be  rid 
of  him. 

"  Plenty  left,"  he  observed  encouragingly,  puffing  im- 
movably. 

"  Oi  reckon,  sister,  Oi'll  feed  in  the  taproom."  The  voice  sent 
strange  vibrations  of  resentment  through  Will's  being,  and 
particularly  through  his  nostrils,  where  a  mysterious  smell  of 
aniseed  was  called  up,  whether  from  memory  or  the  actual 
moleskins  he  could  not  make  out. 

"  You'll  do  no  such  thing,"  said  Mother  Gander  sharply.  "  It's 
less  trouble  here.     Remember  what  James  says." 

Who  was  James — was  her  husband  not  Charley  ? — ^Will  was 
wondering  dreamily. 

"  Chapter  two,  warse  two — Oi  take  your  p'int,"  answered  this 
odd  figure,  whose  wizened  face  with  the  straggling  whiskers 
seemed  loathsomely  familiar.  But  though  the  beady  eyes  under 
the  moleskin  cap  were  turned  for  a  moment  full  on  his,  remem- 
brance stirred  but  feebly  through  his  after-dinner  lethargy,  and 
it  was  not  till  the  intruder  had  sinuously  and  softly  skirted  the 
great  dining-table  and  begun  solemnly  turning  the  faces  of  the 

H 


1 14  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

hunting  pictures  to  the  wall,  like  naughty  school-children,  that 
he  was  dully  conscious  of  the  secret  of  his  abhorrence.  There — 
on  the  very  first  day  of  his  return — was  Joshua  Mawhbod,  the 
button-snipping  villain  of  his  story  ! 

Mother  Gander  stood  by  silent,  as  one  properly  censured. 
Neither  did  she  protest  when,  slashing  a  giant  gobbet  oflE  the  beef, 
he  carried  it  on  the  point  of  the  carving-knife  to  Will's  mustard- 
strewn  meat-plate,  and  bearing  the  same  with  its  dirty  knife 
and  fork  to  the  remotest  corner  of  the  table,  fell  to  with  audible 
enjoyment. 

"  I'll  send  you  your  milk.  Deacon,"  she  said,  turning  to  leave 
the  room." 

"  Don't  copy  Jael  too  far,"  he  answered,  with  a  grimace. 

"  Copy  who  ?  "  asked  Mother  Gander,  mystified. 

"  Jael,  the  wife  of  Heber  the  Kenite — her  as  killed  Sisera. 
Like  me  he  asked  for  water,  and,  like  you,  she  gave  him  milk. 
But  she  meant  to  nail  him  like  a  stoat." 

"  Me  murder  you  !  "  said  Mother  Gander  with  a  scandalized 
air.     But  she  was  clearly  impressed  by  his  erudition. 

" 'Tis  onnymyfun.  But  you  look  up  Judges,  chapter  fower. 
They're  beacons  to  us — they  old  Hebrews  and  Hebrewesses — 
beacons." 

"  Would  you  rather  not  have  the  milk  ?  "  Mother  Gander 
was  still  a  little  puzzled. 

"  'Tain't  for  me  to  refuse  a  sister's  kindness.  And  the  best 
way  to  repay  her  is  to  take  it  with  rum.  Bein'  as  there's  a 
wisitor,  the  leetlest  drop  o'  rum  in  it,  to  show  Oi  don't  howd 
with  your  rebukers  in  that  regard.  Send  the  bottle  separate,  to 
be  plain  to  all  beholders." 

"  And  send  me  another  pint  of  porter,  please,"  added  Will. 
He  felt  he  must  justify  his  stay  even  as  the  Deacon  must  justify 
his  drink.  The  ecclesiastical  preferment  that  had  come  to  Eld^r 
Mawhood  amused  him — ^his  boyish  resentment  faded  suddenly, 
and  the  respectable  rat-catcher — after  all,  the  motor-impulse  of 
his  fortunes — now  loomed  through  a  cloud  of  kindly  indulgence  ; 
even  touched  with  the  glamour  of  early  memories,  with  the 
magic  of  those  far-off  winters  whose  approach  had  brought  the 
expert  to  Frog  Farm  as  surely  as  it  brought  in  from  the  hedges 
the  creatures  against  whom  he  waged  cunning  battle  in  the  war- 
zone  of  the  barns  and  outbuildings.  How  thrilled  the  boy  had 
been  by  the  great  traps  and  the  pack  of  ferrets — nay,  had  not 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  115 

the  strange  old  man  seemed  himself  a  larger  ferret,  with  his 
tight-fitting  moleskins,  sidling  motions,  and  curiously  small 
shining  eyes  ?  What  a  joy  his  annual  visit — with  what  fearful 
interest  the  bunch  of  children  had  listened  to  the  annual  contract, 
made  for  gross  sums,  or  for  particular  buildings,  sometimes 
calculated  per  tail  of  rats !  The  Elder  had  always  made  a  point 
of  the  cost  of  the  shoe-leather  involved  in  the  isolation  of  Frog 
Farm.  Aniseed,  Will  suddenly  remembered,  had  played  a  con- 
siderable part  in  beguiling  the  victims,  and  the  scent  of  it,  coming 
up  again, — dream-whiff  or  reality — was  now  incongruously 
mingled  with  a  flavour  of  youth  and  innocence,  touching  our 
rustic  Ulysses  almost  to  tears.  He  wheeled  his  arm-chair 
window-wards  to  hide  his  emotion,  and  puffed  into  the  court- 
yard. 

"  Oi  don't  object  to  your  smokin',"  mumbled  the  Deacon. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Will.  "  You  don't  remember  me,  I'm 
afraid,  Mr.  Mawhood."  "  Deacon "  he  could  not  bring  his 
tongue  to.  "  I'm  Will  Flynt,  the  looker's  boy  you  were 
always  so  kind  to.  You  let  me  set  your  traps  and  dose  the 
bait." 

The  Deacon  shot  a  beady  look  at  him,  but  shook  his 
head. 

"  Why,  you  let  me  smell  your  ferret  once,  don't  you  remember, 
when  it  came  out  of  the  hole  by  the  Brad,  and  you  said  that 
though  I  hadn't  heard  a  squeak  or  a  scamper,  your  nose  could 
tell  there  had  been  rats  in  the  run." 

"  There  was  swarms  of  boys  at  Frog  Farm,  all  bad  'uns.  Oi 
never  knew  'em  by  tail — but  Oi  dessay  Oi  do  remember  ye  in 
the  rough." 

Will  was  strangely  disappointed.  "  Don't  you  remember  I 
lent  you  my  slate  to  hide  the  trap  from  that  cute  old 
rascal  ?  " 

"  Ay,  warmints  alius  runs  to  cover,"  said  the  Deacon 
vaguely. 

"  And  when  caught  he  wouldn't  eat  the  bait,  surely  you 
remember  ?  " 

"  They  never  does.  Rats  has  more  sperrit  than  lions,"  said 
the  Deacon  with  enthusiasm. 

The  abortive  attempt  to  recall  himself  to  the  rat-catcher  was 
ended  by  the  return  of  the  waiter,  whose  delicate  balance  of  rum- 
bottle,  milk-glass,  and  pewter  pot  on  the  tiniest  of  trays,  was 


ii6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

afmost  upset  by  the  sight  of  the  blank  backs  of  the  hunting 
pictures.  He  seemed  as  startled  as  though  he  was  not  in  the 
conjuring  line  himself.  Depositing  the  drinks,  with  his  usual 
sleight  of  hand,  at  both  ends  of  the  room  simultaneously,  he 
made  as  if  to  reverse  the  pictures.  But  the  Deacon  emitted  a 
sibilance  so  terrifying  that  he  did  the  vanishing  trick  instead. 
The  old  man  then  produced  from  either  pocket  a  pale-yellow, 
pmk-eyed  creature,  and  emptied  the  milk-glass  into  a  saucer. 
"  How  thirsty  they  gets  this  weather,"  he  observed,  as  they 
lapped  greedily  at  the  milk.  "  Pore  things — their  need  is 
greater  than  mine." 

VI 

Will  was  sipping  his  porter  ^f^wo,  and  the  Deacon  his  rum 
strepitoso — the  ferrets  back  in  his  pockets — when  the  door 
opened  afresh,  and  a  new  figure  protruded  through  it,  likewise 
drawing  back  when  the  room  which  should  have  been  empty 
at  that  hour  was  seen  to  be  in  occupation.  This  was,  how- 
ever, a  very  different  figure  from  the  Deacon's :  a  figure 
jovial  and  ponderous,  sporting  a  floral  dressing-gown  and  carpet 
slippers,  and  with  all  the  air  of  having  just  left  an  adjacent 
bedroom. 

"  Come  in — don't  mind  me,"  called  Will  cheerfully. 

The  smoker's  invitation  not  being  negatived  by  the  muncher 
and  bibber,  the  massive  visitor  padded  forwards,  revealing  more 
clearly  liis  heav}''-jowled  hairless  rubicund  face  and  the  motley 
multitude  of  stains  on  his  gay  dressing-gown,  and  waving  a  roll 
of  clammy-smelling  posters.  "  Just  come  by  the  coach — and  in 
the  nick  o'  time,"  he  observed  genially.  And  espying  in  the 
reversed  pictures  a  favourable  background  for  his  operations,  he 
circumvented  the  table  (not  without  surprise  and  disgust  at  the 
corner  where  the  moleskinned  man  grunted,  guzzled,  and  guttled), 
and  hung  up  two  of  the  bills  on  the  nails  without  any  observable 
astonishment  at  the  state  of  the  pictures  or  any  apparent  atten- 
tion to  anything  but  his  own  interests  ;  stepping  backwards  to 
survey  the  effect  with  such  absorption  of  mind  that  through  the 
girdle  of  his  dressing-gown  his  spine  collided  with  the  table. 

"  No,  my  boy  !  "  he  addressed  Will.  "  They  can't  print  like 
that  in  Chipstone." 

From  his  arin-chair  Will  could  easily  read  the  more  glaring 
headlines  : 


WILL  DN  HIS  WAY  117 

TO-NIGHT  AT   S  E  V  E  N  — L  I  F  E  -  S  IZ  E 

DUKE'S  MARIONETTES 

Hamlet  And  The  Ghost 

Margaret  Catchpole 

Pantomime-Ballet 

THE   MISTLETOE    BOUGH 

The  Beggar  oj  Bethnal  Green 

Edmund,  Orphan  of  the  Castle 

The  High  Road  to  Marriage 

As  Performed  Before  all  the  Crowned  Heads 
Of  Europe,  America,  and  Australia 

N.B. — Miss  Arabella  Flippance  at  the  Piano 

"  Sounds  bully,"  he  observed  politely. 

"  Bully's  the  word,  my  young  American  friend,"  said  the 
Showman.  "  What  a  pity  the  mail-coach  was  late — we  mJght 
have  had  'em  stuck  up  for  the  ordinary  and  caught  some  shilling 
patrons.     You're  staying  here  for  the  night,  I  hope." 

"  No — I've  got  to  go  on." 

"  What  a  pity  !     I  was  about  to  oiler  you  a  front  seat." 

"  Me  ?     Why  ?  " 

"  Must  fill  up  somehow,"  said  the  Showman  frankly,  "  People 
never  go  to  a  play  unless  they  think  they  can't  get  in.  And  as 
we  only  open  to-night,  there's  not  been  time  to  advertise  our 
bumper  houses.  You  see,  sonny,  we  lay  up  here  for  the  winter, 
and  if  we'd  started  before  this  heat-wave  we'd  have  caught 
more  colds  than  coppers." 

"  Is  it  open-air  then  ?  " 

"  No,  but  the  next  thing  to  it — a  tent  !  By  squinting  out  of 
that  window  you'll  see  the  whole  caboodle  rising  on  the  meadows 
like  a  giant  mushroom.  Why  not  stop  here  and  pick  up  a  young 
lady  ?     I'll  give  you  two  seats." 

"  Don't  want  more  than  one  seat  when  I've  got  a  girl,"  laughed 
Will.     Then  the  face  of  the  girl  in  the  parcel-shed  came  up,  at 


ii8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

once  alluring  and  rebuking,  and  he  repeated  that  seriously  he 
miist  be  off. 

"  Never  mind — better  luck  next  act,"  said  the  Showman,  and 
tugged  furiously  at  the  bell-pull,  and  the  waiter  appeared  with 
a  glass  of  brandy  and  water,  as  though  he  added  thought-reading 
to  his  conjuring  accomplishments. 

"  Well,  here's  to  our  better !  "  began  the  Showman.      His 

eye,  raised  towards  Will  at  the  window,  caught  suddenly  some- 
thing in  the  courtyard,  and  setting  down  his  untasted  glass  and 
snatching  up  his  posters  he  disappeared  almost  as  frantically  as 
the  dog. 

"  He's  forgot  he  ain't  dressed,"  chuckled  the  waiter. 

"  Seems  to  be  a  merry  gent,"  said  Will. 

"  Lives  here  all  the  while  the  show  is  on,"  said  the  waiter,  not 
without  pride.     "  Pays  me  a  shilling  every  time  I  go  in." 

''  I  hope  on  the  same  principle  Mother  Gander  will  pay  m/?," 
said  Will,  laughing,  and  ordered  his  bill :  which  he  found  as 
unreasonable  as  the  food  was  excellent.  He  did  not,  however, 
mulct  the  waiter  of  the  handsome  tip,  designed  to  show  him 
not  a  woman  but  a  man  and  a  gentleman  at  that,  and 
the  waiter  finally  disappeared  with  congees  instead  of  with, 
conjurings. 

"  I  know  you  will  excuse  me,  old  fellow,"  said  the  Showman, 
re-entering,  *'  but  business  before  pleasure.  Fact  is,  I  got  up 
too  late  to  catch  the  carriers,  but  now  I've  got  the  postman  to 
leave  my  bills  at  all  the  public-houses  on  his  next  round.  Good 
fellow,  Bundock,  though  why  he  should  boast  so  over  killing 
two  frogs  with  one  stone,  I  don't  understand.  It  seems  an 
operation  as  cruel  as  it  is  simple."  Here  he  swigged  at  his 
neglected  glass.  "  He  made  a  point,  too,  of  my  not  em.pjoying 
the  Bellman." 

"  You'd  have  done  better  with  the  Bellman  here  in  Chipstone 
and  over  at  Latchem,"  volunteered  Will.  "  Where  Bundock 
mostly  goes,  you'll  never  get  'em  to  come." 

"  That's  what  Bundock  said.  But  don't  you  believe  it, 
sonny."  He  held  up  a  huge  hairy  forefinger,  half  gilded  with  a 
great  ring.  "  They're  only  a  canting  lot  o'  sons  of  slow-coaches. 
They've  never  had  the  chance  of  knowing  what  they  like. 
Temptation's  the  thing." 

The  diaconal  sibilance  that  greeted  this  sinister  sentiment  fell 
unheeded  on  the  Showman's  ear,  or  rather  he  did  not  distmguish 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  119 

it  from  the  worthy  Mawhood's  general  medley  of  guttural  and 
nasal  noises. 

"  There's  no  greater  temptation,"  added  the  Showman,  "  than 
Shakespeare  and  the  Ballet." 

Will  shook  his  head.  "  They  don't  know  one  from  t'other. 
Did — I  mean,  if  they  did  " — ^he  had  slipped  into  the  old  idiom — 
"  they'd  be  scandalized.  Why,  I  went  to  see  a  piece  of  Shake- 
speare at  Sadler's  Wells  myself  last  week,  and  I'm  bound  to  say 
'twas  a  bit  thick — though  splendidly  acted,  mind  you." 

"  You  needn't  tell  me  that,  Phelps  !  "  He  smacked  his  fleshy 
lips  voluptuously,  "  Lord  !  What  a  job  that  man  had  to  clear 
out  the  beer-sellers,  babies,  and  filthy-mouthed  roughs,  and  now 
it's  the  quietest  show  in  London.     What  was  the  piece  ?  " 

"  Can't  remember  the  name — about  a  nigger." 

"  Othello  ?  " 

^'  That's  it — sounded  a  rather  Irish  name  for  a  nigger  I 
thought." 

"  Irish  ?  Ah,  yes — ha,  ha,  ha  1  You  had  me  there  !  By 
Jove,  that's  a  new  wheeze !  "  And  he  roared  genially,  while  the 
innocent,  and  it  is  to  be  feared  sadly  illiterate.  Will  tried  to  look 
like  a  successful  humorist.  "  Anyhow,"  he  said,  "  you  won't 
get  'em  from  Little  Bradmarsh,  no,  nor  Long  Bradmarsh  either. 
They  think  all  actors  are  wicked." 

"  And  so  they  be  !  "  burst  forth  the  Deacon  at  last.  "  Hobs 
and  Jills  ought  to  be  kept  apart !  "  He  stuck  his  knife  towards 
the  poster.  "  The  High  Road  to  Marriage^  indeed  !  High  road 
to  Hell !  " 

"  Hear,  hear,"  agreed  the  Showman  surprisingly,  rattling  his 
glass.  ''  Well  put,  old  cock.  But  these  ain't  actors ;  only 
puppets.     You  can't  be  wicked  in  wood." 

''  I'm  afraid  I  must  be  off,"  said  Will,  rising. 

"  Then  here's  luck  to  you,"  He  finished  his  glass.  "  And 
may  you  die  before  you're  buried  !  " 

"  Thanks,  I  hope  I  shan't  do  either,  Mr.  Duke,"  He  took  his 
hat  and  stick. 

"  Not  Duke,  old  man.  Flippance,  Anthony  Flippance,  univer- 
sally docked  to  Tony  Flip,  Duke  only  goes  with  the  Marionettes. 
I  bought  'em  lock,  stock,  and  barrel — the  oldest  circuit  in  East 
Anglia,  and  the  name  going  well  with  the  crowned  heads," 

"  But  there  are  no  crowned  heads  in  America,"  said  Will, 
smiling. 


120  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

*'  Pardon  me,  sonny,"  contradicted  Mr.  Flippance. 
"  But  I've  just  come  from  there,"  said  Will  crushingly. 
"  And  how  about  the  Emperor  of  Brazil  ?  " 
"  Oh  !  "  said  Will  blankly.     He  seemed  really  to  have  heard 
of  this  personage.     Then  recovering,  he  said  :    *'  But  have  you 
played  before  him  ?  " 

"  That's  not  my  affair,"  said  Mr.  Flippance.  "  It  ain't  my 
responsibility  what  Duke's  done  or  left  undone — if  Duke  was  his 
name,  which  I  take  leave  to  question.  'Twixt  you  and  I,  I 
doubt  if  it  would  pay  to  work  Brazil.     But,  as  I  said,  I  bought 

it  as  a  going  concern,  lock,  stock " 

"  And  lies,"  snapped  the  Deacon. 

Mr.  Flippance  turned  his  large  red  face  benevolently  towards 
the  moleskins. 

"  Lies  is  a  harsh  word.     Legends,  old  cock,  legends." 
"  Oi  bain't  a  bird,"  rasped  the  Deacon.     "  Stick  to  the  truth." 
''  Lord  love  us,  a  Quaker  !  "     Mr.  Flippance  winked  at  Will, 
who  smiled — man  of  the  world  to  man  of  the  world.     "  As  if 
anybody  would  take  a  thing  that  size  and  smell  for  a  rooster ! " 

The  Deacon  reached  for  the  rum-bottle  in  deadly  silence.  Will, 
with  a  fear — soon  proved  superfluous — that  he  meant  it  for  a 
missile,  hastened  to  remark  that  anyhow  there  were  no  crowned 
heads  in  Australia. 

"  Where  were  you  educated,  sonny  ?  "  retorted  Mr.  Flippance. 
And  he  began  whistling  the  then  favourite  air  :  "The  King  of 
the  Cannibal  Islands."  He  broke  off  to  point  out  that  kings 
and  queens  were  as  thick  in  the  man-eating  islands  round 
Australia  as  old  cocks  in  Essex,  though  they  didn't  wear  mole- 
skins, or  indeed  anything  but  their  own  skins.  Besides,  he 
added  as  an  afterthought,  wasn't  Queen  Victoria  monarch  of 
Australia  too  ? 

Will,  taken  aback  again,  had  to  admit  it.  "  But  you  haven't 
played  before  Victoria  ?  "  he  murmured. 

Mr.  Flippance  winked  more  widely  as  he  explained  that  a 
study  of  the  posters  would  show  that  the  Marionettes  themselves 
never  claimed  to  have  performed  before  crowned  heads.  It  was 
the  plays  that  had  been  performed.  He  turned  suddenly  upon 
the  rum-soothed  Deacon.  "  You're  not  denying,  my  Quaker 
friend,  that  Queen  Victoria's  seen  Hamlet  t  " 

"  You  leave  me  and  the  Queen  out  of  it,"  growled  the  Deacon. 
"  Ha  !     Then  you  admit  she's  seen  Hamlet  ?  " 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  121 

"  Oi  don't  know  nawthen  about  it.  Why  should  she  see 
Hamlet  ?  " 

"  Because  he  was  the  Prince  of  Denmark,"  said  Tony,  winking 
again  at  his  now  bosom  friend.  "  But  you  Methody  Quaker 
dead-aHve  go-to-meeting  sons  of  Sundayfied  slugs  crawl  about 
thinking  yourselves  holier  than  Victoria,  God  bless  her,  even 
when  it's  wood,  never  having  seen  society  or  ever  had  a  drink 
outside  Chipstone." 

The  Deacon  was  roused  at  last.  "  Never  had  a  drink  outside 
Chipstone  !  "  His  breast  heaved  with  a  sinister  movement — 
w^as  it  a  wheeze  of  wrath  or  of  laughter  ?  "  Oi'U  goo  bail  my 
round  is  bigger  nor  yourn.  There  ain't  scarce  a  barn  in  East 
Anglia  what  don't  know  me." 

Tony's  great  jaw  fell.  "  A  barnstormer !  You !  Rats  \ 
What  do  you  play  ?  " 

"  It  ain't  play— it's  work." 
"  Yes,  I  know — but  what's  your  repertory  ?  " 
"  My  what  ?  " 
"  Your  pieces." 

"  Oi  bain't  onny  a  piece-worker." 
"  In  what  ?  " 

"  In  what  you  said.     It  ain't  always  per  tail." 
"  Retail,  do  you  mean  ?  "  said  the  puzzled  Tony. 
Will,   who  had  listened  to.  the   conversation  with   an   ever- 
expanding  grin,  here  burst  into  a  guffaw.     Tony  turned  on  him. 
"  Is  he  kidding  me  ?  "  he  asked  half  angrily,  half  amicably. 
The  answer — like  Will's  departure  from  this  enthralling  parlour 
— was  staved  off  by  the  advent  of  yet  another  head  popped  into 
the  doorway.     This  time  it  was  a  heavily  greased  head  with 
scrupulously  parted  hair,  and  was  attached  to  a  spruce  young 
man  with  a  spring  posy  in  his  buttonhole..    But  his  bear's-grease 
outsmelt  his  primroses. 

"  Hullo,  Tony !  "  cried  the  aromatic  apparition.  "  Up 
already  !  " 

"  Fve  got  to  work  for  my  living,"  Mr.  Flippance  retorted. 
"  The  dormouse  season  is  over.  You  coming  in,  Charley,  to  see 
the  show  to-night  ?  " 

"  Me  1  I've  got  better  things  to  do,  old  boy."  The  young 
landlord  turned  to  the  Deacon.  "  Can  vou  let  me  have  five  or 
six  live  'uns  ?  " 

The  Deacon  shook  his  head.     "  Oi  don't  want  to  disoblige 


122  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

brother,  Oi  do  my  duty  according  to  Peter — '  nat'ral  brute 
beasts  made  to  be  taken  and  destroyed  ' — but  they  bain't  meant 
by  the  Almoighty  to  be  taken  for  sport,  and  Oi  don't  howd  with 
fox-hunting  neither." 

"  So  I  see."  Mr.  Charles  Mott  glanced  glumly  at  the  backs  of 
the  pictures. 

"  Ef  you  want  to  be  riddy  o'  warmints,  shoot  'em,  says  Oi,  or 
nip  their  brushes  in  traps." 

*'  Oh,  oh  !  "  came  involuntarily  from  Will  at  this  blasphemy. 
The  Deacon  transfixed  him  with  his  glittering  eye,  but  went  on 
without  pausing:  "And  ef  you  want  to  be  riddy  o'  rats,  come 
to  me.  Don't  set  a-worshippin'  your  prize-terriers,  like  Ephraim 
jined  to  his  idols." 

"  I  did  come  to  you  to  be  rid  o'  the  warmints,  and  now  I  want 
half-a-dozen  spunky  'uns.  Make  your  own  price,  but  if  you 
won't  supply  'em  I'll  get  'em  from  Bill  Nutbone." 

"  That's  doubly  sinful — to  goo  to  the  heathen."  He  turned  to 
Will.  "  Ef  you're  so  fond  o'  ferrets,  young  man,  Oi  could  spare 
you  this  pair — cheaper  than  you'll  get  'em  from  Nutbone."  He 
let  their  pink  eyes  protrude  from  his  pockets. 

Will  eagerly  closed  with  the  offer.  If  Frog  Farm  proved  as 
dull  as  he  was  now  beginning  to  fear — after  this  contrast  of 
Anthony  Flippance  and  Joshua  Mawhood — ratting  or  rabbiting 
might  be  a  providential  diversion. 

"  But  I  can't  carry  them  in  my  pockets,"  he  said  impressively. 
"  Just  made  by  Moses  &  Son,  London.  And  I've  got  a  long 
walk.     Besides,  I'd  like  them  in  cages." 

"  Oi'l]  send  'em  by  the  carrier  on  Friday,"  promised  the  rat- 
catcher. "  Frog  Farm,  you  said.  Good  day  to  you,  Brother 
Mott." 

"  Good  day.  Deacon.  Sorry  we  can't  do  business.  Queer  old 
cuss,"  he  said,  winking  at  Will  as  the  door  closed.  ''  Belongs  to 
the  Peculiars." 

"  I — I've  heard  of  them."     Will  coloured  a  bit. 

Tony,  who  had  listened  to  the  dialogue  with  enlightenment, 
here  stalked  out  in  half-genuine  horror  :  "  Holy  Moses  &  Son  ! 
The  publican  and  sinner  prefers  rats  to  Shakespeare  !  " 

"  Stow  it,  Tony ! "  called  the  landlord  after  him.  "  One 
preacher's  enough."  And,  smiling,  he  changed  the  blanks  into 
hunting  pictures  almost  as  deftly  as  his  waiter  would  have 
done  it. 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  123 

He  had  scarcely  effected  the  transformation,  however,  before 
the  Deacon  popped  his  head  in  again.  Mr.  Mott  looked  Hke  a 
caught  schoolboy,  but  though  the  beady  eyes  looked  straight 
at  the  flamboyant  hunters,  Mr.  Mawhood  only  said  :  "  Oi  forgot 
to  lend  a  law-book." 

"  What  sort  of  a  law-book  d'ye  want  ?  " 

"  Miss  Gentry's  got  a  counter-claim.  Ef  Oi  won't  pay  for  my 
wife's  silk  dress  as  Oi  never  ordered,  she  says  my  ferrets  killed 
her  chickens." 

"  That's  not  a  counter-claim,  Mr.  Mawhood,"  advised  Will. 

"  It's  a  lyin'  claim,  anyways.  What  killed  her  chickens  was 
her  own  black  devil.  Squibs.     Her  and  her  angels  !  " 

"  You  go  down  to  the  bar  and  see  if  the  missus  can  find  you  a 
book — but  wouldn't  a  lawyer  be  better  ?  " 

"  The  good  Lord  forbid !  Oi'd  sooner  goo  to  a  doctor.  Well, 
thank  you  kindly,  brother — one  good  turn  desarves  another. 
Foive,  Oi  think  you  said." 

"  Or  six.  First  thing  in  the  morning.  Spunky  'uns,  remem- 
ber." 

The  Deacon  sighed  and  disappeared  again. 

"  Poor  old  chap  !  "  Sure  of  his  rats,  Mr.  Mott  was  now 
touched  to  sympathy.  "  His  missus  is  a  Tartar,  no  mistake. 
Still  with  them  rounds  of  his,  he  dodges  her  a  good  deal."  And 
he  sighed  like  the  Deacon  and  followed  him — bear's-grease  after 
aniseed — and  Will,  alone  at  last,  followed  too,  though  without 
a  sigh,  being  still — as  the  waiter  said — "  one  of  the  lucky  ones." 

In  the  corridor  he  turned  the  wrong  way,  finding  bedroom 
doors  instead  of  the  staircase.  He  paused  a  moment  to  gaze  at 
a  stuffed  specimen  of  the  sacred  animal  that  stood  with  brush 
rampant  against  a  scenic  background  under  a  glass  case,  and  a 
stuffed  trout  that  swam  movelessly  through  a  mimic  stream. 
Then  he  became  aware  to  his  surprise  that  Tony  Flip,  still  in  his 
dressing-gown  and  still  hugging  the  balance  of  his  posters,  was 
pacing  the  corridor  restlessly,  like  a  caged  lion,  though  it  turned 
out  to  be  really  like  a  tame  creature  denied  his  cage. 

"  They  won't  let  me  in,"  he  said  miserably.  And  he  indicated 
an  open  bedroom  door  opposite  the  fox,  with  a  view  of  house- 
maids at  work,  angry  at  the  hour.  One  was  'making  his  bed, 
thumping  it  viciously ;  another  raised  swirls  of  dust  with  a 
broom.     Slops  stood  blatantly  around. 

"  They  won't  even  take  free  seats,"  he  groaned. 


124  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

VII 

"  What  did  I  tell  you  ?  "  said  Will. 

"  Oh,  it  ain't  because  they  think  it  wicked,  the  hussies.  They 
turn  up  their  noses  at  it,  just  because  it's  under  their  noses.  If 
they  had  to  go  to  Greenwich  Fair  to  see  it,  they'd  fight  to  get 
in.     Candidly,  cocky,  have  you  ever  seen  a  better  biU  ?  " 

"  It  seems  only  too  much,"  ventured  Will. 

"  It  don't  say  all  at  the  same  performance.  In  practice  it  all 
comes  down  to  The  Mistletoe  Bough,  the  silliest  of  the  lot,  a  bride 
who  shuts  herself  in  a  chest  for  fun,  you  know,  and  moulders  into  a 
spirit.  But  think  of  Richardson's — what  they  cram  into  tw^enty- 
five  minutes!  You  saw  that  at  Greenwich,  I  suppose,  Easter 
time." 

"  No,  I  only  got  to  London  in  time  for  the  Great  Exhibition." 

/'  You've  been  to^that  ?  "     The  Showman's  eyes  sparkled. 

■"  What  I  came  back  for." 

"  That's  a  Show ! !  "  And  a  note  of  immeasurable  envy  mixed 
with  the  rapture  of  the  rival  impresario.  "  But  what  a  chance 
missed  !  " 

"  How  so  ?  " 

"  No  drinks." 

"  I  got  lemonade." 

"  That's  not  a  drink — that's  a  gas.  Lord,  I  thought,  looking 
at  that  bumper  house,  with  a  proper  Christian  bar,  they  could 
pay  off  the  National  Debt." 

"  You've  seen  it  then  ?  " 

"  Was  there  at  the  opening.  Stood  so  near  the  Royal  Party 
I  patted  the  head  of  little  Wales,  and  the  Goldstick  and  Chamber- 
lain walking  backwards  from  the  Presence  nearly  shoved  me 
into  the  Chinese  Ambassador  just  as  he  was  salaaming  on  his 
stomach.  Didn't  little  Albert  Edward  look  sweet  in  his  High- 
land costume  ? " 

"  I  wasn't  inside  then,"  confessed  Will,  "  and  I  only  had  eyes 
for  the  Queen  and  her  cream-coloured  horses.  You've  got  a 
season  ticket,  I  suppose." 

"  With  the  Prince  Consort's  compliments.  The  fact  is,  I 
supplied  the  elephant  for  the  Queen's  howdah." 

''Did  you?" 

"  Yes,  didn't  you  see  it  in  the  Indian  compartment  ?  They 
wanted  to  show  off  the  magnificent  trappings  she  got  from  the 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  125 

Rajah,  and  they  thought  of  getting  a  real  hve  elephant,  which 
would  have  been  no  end  of  trouble  amid  all  those  precious  vases. 
But  I  happened  to  know  of  a  stuffed  elephant  at  a  show  down 
here  in  Essex,  so  I  entered  into  correspondence  with  Buckingham 
Palace  and  loaned  the  beast  for  the  season — buying  him  up  first, 
of  course--^and  sent  him  up  in  my  caravan  that  had  to  be  roused 
from  its  winter  sleep  and  completely  unpacked.  Yes,  trouble 
enough  !  But  talk  of  the  Koh-i-noor,  that  elephant'll  be  worth 
his  weight  in  gold  when  he  comes  back — Queen  Victoria's 
elephant  as  visited  by  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  the  world.  I 
annex  the  Great  Exhibition.     See  !  " 

"  I  wish  I'd  noticed  him,"  said  Will  wistfully.  "  I  only  saw 
her  statue  in  zinc,  seven  yards  high.  But  there's  so  much  to 
see — machinery  and  jewels  and  Mexican  figures,  it  makes  your 
head  ache,  and  I  couldn't  even  get  a  look  at  that  Koh-i-noor, 
such  a  crush  round  it.     But  did  you  see  the  Preserved  Pig  ?  " 

The  Showman's  eyes  twinkled.     "  Mr.  Woods,  d'ye  mean  ?  " 

"  Mr.  Woods  ?  " 

"  The  Chancellor,  of  the  Exchequer.  Haven't  you  noticed  how 
they've  left  off  abusing  the  income  tax  now  they've  got  the 
show  to  talk  about  ?  By  Jove,"  he  chuckled,  "  what  a  haul  for 
the  Exchequer  if  they  bring  the  Crystal  Palace  under  the 
window  tax  !  " 

"  No,  no  !  Best  Berkshire  breed.  The  real  marvel  of  the 
Exhibition  !  None  o'  your  stuffed  creatures,  but  a  natural  pig 
cured  whole.  Weighs  three  and  a  half  hundredweight ;  five  foot 
and  a  half  from  tail  to  snout.  'Twas  done  by  a  provision 
m.erchant  in  Dublin — Smith — I  took  note  of  the  name." 

"  That  name  will  be  immortal,"  said  Mr.  Flippance  gravely. 

"  Yes,  and  there  was  a  monster  pigeon-pie !  "  said  Will  with 
the  same  unsuspicious  enthusiasm. 

The  church  clock,  striking  four  at  this  point,  made  the  Show- 
man bound  frantically  to  his  doorway.  "  Not  done  yet,  you 
snails  and  sluts  !  When  am  I  to  get  these  bills  to  the  tent  ?  Do 
you  realize  we  open  to-night  ?     You'll  ruin  the  show." 

"  I'll  take  them,"  volunteered  Will.  "  My  road  lays  by  the 
field." 

"  A  friend  in  need  is  a  friend  indeed."  Tony  thrust  the 
heavy  roll  effusively  into  Will's  hands.  "  Ask  for  my  daughter — 
she'll  help  you  to  stick  'em  up  on  the  bill-boards." 

"  Your  daughter  ?  "  murmured  Will.     He  would  have  resented 


126  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

his  sudden  reduction  to  a  bill-poster  but  for  the  romantic  vision 
of  the  Bohemian  petticoat. 

"  I  can't  pull  the  strings  on  both  sides  of  the  stage  at  once, 
can  I  ?  Not  to  mention  the  women's  and  boys'  voices,  and  the 
piping  Gaffers.  Lord,  she's  got  a  head  on  her,  has  Polly.  And 
pops  in  and  out  to  play  the  piano  too." 

With  pleasant  flutterings  of  the  springtide  fancy,  the  young 
man  lightly  strode  with  his  roll  under  his  arm  to  the  field  where 
a  long  chocolate-coloured  caravan — apparently  the  vehicle  that 
had  transported  the  elephant — stood  horseless  at  an  aperture  in 
the  mammoth  mushroom  described  by  Tony  Flip.  Labourers 
in  shirt-sleeves  were  carrying  in  ropes  and  rough  benches.  Small 
boys  and  large  dogs  stood  around,  and  there  was  a  litter  of 
straw,  cardboard,  shivered  packing-cases,  and  dirty  paper.  Two 
trucks  covered  with  tarpaulin,  and  a  vast  box  with  a  high-pitched 
roof  marked  "  Duke's  Marionettes,"  completed  the  confusion. 
Will,  peeping  in,  saw  a  stage  already  set,  at  the  border  of  which 
a  girl  on  her  knees  was  tacking  a  row  of  tin  footlight-holders. 
The  rear  was  already  roped  off,  and  the  benches  seemed  to  rise 
like  a  gallery.  Evidently  the  thing  was  done  in  style — crowned 
heads  or  no  crowned  heads.  Not  without  a  thrill  he  w^alked  in, 
and  across  the  grassy  floor,  but  romance  fled  when  the  girl, 
raising  her  head,  presented  a  face  almost  as  massive  as  her 
father's,  and  ravaged  by  smallpox  to  boot.  Polly  had  indeed 
"  a  head  on  her,"  he  thought,  though  long  pendent  ear-rings 
preserved  its  femininity. 

Politely  concealing  his  chill,  he  murmured  "  Miss  Flippance," 
and  explained  he  had  been  instructed  to  deliver  the  bills  to  her. 

She  received  them  and  him  with  an  indifference  that  would 
have  been  galling  had  she  been  prettier,  and  was  not  gratifying 
even  from  a  massive  brain. 

"  Silly  nonsense  !  "  she  grumbled,  unrolling  them.  "  To  open 
before  you've  done  your  posting  and  circularizing.  There  won't 
be  a  soul !  " 

"  Oh,  surely — this  weather  !  "  he  murmured. 

Miss  Flippance  threw  him  an  annihilating  glance.  "  If  dad 
once  gets  an  idea  into  his  head,  you  can't  get  it  out  with  a 
forceps."  Will  stared  at  this  vigorous  young  lady,  who,  with  a 
poster  unfurled  in  her  hand,  proceeded  to  yell  directions  and 
rebukes  at  the  bench-arranging  clodhoppers.  It  was  an  insult 
to  his  sex,  he  felt  resentfully.     No  woman,  however  ugly,  had 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  127 

the  right  to  order  men  about,  men  who  were  not  even  married 
to  her. 

"  Nincompoops  !  They'll  never  be  ready  for  to-night,"  said 
Miss  Flippance,  acknowledging  his  existence  again.  "  Would  to 
heaven  dad  had  gone  up  to  London  to  see  the  Exhibition — and 
not  hustled  us  like  this." 

"  But  he  was  there  at  the  opening." 
Miss  Flippance  stared  at  him.     "  Were  you  with  him  ?  " 
"  No  such  luck.     I  didn't  even  see  the  stuffed  elephant." 
''  Has  he  stuffed  you  with  that  ?  "     Miss  Flippance  emitted  a 
mirthless  laugh,  and  Will  looked  at  once  angry  and  sheepish. 
"  Not  that  way,  you  hulking  brutes  !     Turn  'em  round.  .  .  .  And 
besides,   it's  ridiculous   to  give  Hamlet,     High  art   don't  take 
south  of  Scarborough." 

"  Well,  I  saw  Othello  in  London  last  week,"  he  contradicted 
sharply — she  should  see  he  was  no  mere  gull :  "  And  the  pit  was 
packed." 

"  Yes — in  April.  But  try  it  in  the  dog-days." 
"  Too  warm,  eh  ?  "  he  sniggered.  She  turned  away  as  from 
an  idiot.  That  hurt  him  more  than  having  swallowed  her 
father's  royal  rodomontade.  Did  she  then  think  the  plot  of 
Othello  glacial  ?  Or  had  she  no  sense  of  humour  ?  Yes,  that 
was  it — the  sex  had  been  denied  the  sense  of  humour.  True,  it 
shrieked  with  laughter  if  you  tickled  it,  but  the  tickling  must  be 
physical.  Ah,  she  was  at  it  again,  bustling  and  bullying  the 
superior  sex.  Well,  he  wasn't  going  to  paste  bills  under  her. 
Let  that  lazy  liar  of  a  Showman  do  his  own  dirty  work. 

"  Good  afternoon,"  he  called  out  huffily,  and  walked  out  of 
the  great  tent  in  a  far  less  romantic  mood  than  when  he  had 
entered  it.  And  then,  as  he  came  through  the  opening  in  the  can- 
vas, his  eyes  nearly  started  out  of  their  sockets  :  Daniel  Quarles's 
cart  stood  outside  the  tent,  and  there,  perched  on  the  driving- 
board,  holding  the  reins,  and  calmly  instructing  the  shirt-sleeved 
yokels  to  deliver  the  big  drum  to  Miss  Flippance,  was  the  girl  of 
the  parcel-shed  ! 

VIII 

Before  his  eyes  could  return  normally  to  their  orbits  or  his 
breath  to  his  windpipe,  the  incredible  vision  had  vanished. 
Jinny  had,  in  fact,  had  an  overdose  of  commissions  in  the  other 
purlieus  of  Chipstone,   and  having  fetched  the  drum  from  its 


128  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

winter  quarters  as  directed  by  Miss  Polly  Flippance  that  noon — 
it  had,  in  fact,  been  pawned,  and  the  piano  was  still  irredeemable 
— she  was  hastening  on  her  homeward  circuit  as  fast  as  Methu- 
salem  could  be  induced  to  go. 
"  Who  was  that  ?  "  Will  gasped. 

The  rustic  who  had  received  the  drum  looked  at  him  with 
unconcealed  contempt.     A  man  who  did  not  know  that ! 
"  That  war  Jinny  !  "  he  said. 

It  was  as  if  he  had  given  his  drum  a  terrific  bang.  Jinny  ? — 
Jinny  Quarles  then  !  Who  else  ?  In  the  boom  of  that  name 
reverberated  a  clamour  of  memories  and  of  emotions,  old  and 
new.  Images  of  a  solemn-eyed  mite,  of  a  merry  little  maid,  of  a 
sedate  Sunday  scholar,  and  of  the  amazing  creature  of  to-day, 
went  all  interflashing  with  one  another.  Yes,  the  little  Jinny 
who  had  shared  the  wagon  and  his  secret  with  him  that  fateful 
Sunday,  and  who  if  ever  by  a  rare  chance  she  had  flitted  across 
his  thoughts,  figured  always  as  this  same  little  girl  in  her  grand 
pink  Sunday  pelisse,  trimmed  with  pink  velvet  and  fringes,  was 
now  grown  up  ;   bonneted,  bewitching,  incredible. 

"  But  where — where  was  her  grandfather  ?  "  he  stammered. 
"  Asleep  inside  ?  " 

"  Asleep  ?  "  The  rustic  grinned.  "  A  long  sleep,  Oi  should 
reckon.     Whoy,  wp  ain't  seen  the  Gaffer  for  years." 

"  Don't  stand  there  gossiping."  It  was  the  female  martinet 
at  her  sternest. 

"  It's  not  his  fault,"  said  Will.  "  I  was  asking  about  old 
Daniel  Quarles.     Is  he  really  dead  ?  " 

'•  Dead  ?  Not  to  my  knowledge.  At  least  I  have  never 
noticed  Jinny  in  black." 

"  Then  where  is  he  ?     Why  isn't  he  looking  after  Jinny  ?  " 
"  Eh  ?     But  he  must  be  a  hundred  !  " 

*'  You  don't  mean  to  say  he  lets  Jinny  go  out  and  do  his  job  ?  " 

"  The  most  natural  person  I  should  think,"  said  Miss  Flippance. 

"  Really  I  haven't  time  to  discuss  village  carriers,  if  the  show  is 

to  open  to-night.  ...  Do  be  careful  of  that  drum.     No,  not 

inside,  blockhead.     Come  back  !  " 

As  the  tambour-laden  slave  did  not  seem  to  hear,  his  affrighted 
fellow-serfs  yelled  to  him  to  bring  the  drum  outside  again,  and 
when  he  was  come,  the  despot's  skirts  rustled  majestically  back 
into  the  tent — they  were  long  and  hunched  out  quite  fashionably, 
which  accentuated  the  humiliation  of  the  male  element.     But 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  129 

Will  remained  at  the  tent  door,  like  x^braham  after  an  angel's 
visit,  thunderstruck  and  dumbfounded,  but  with  consternation^ 
not  reverence.  It  was,  he  thought,  the  grossest  carelessness  that 
had  ever  occurred  in  the  history  of  the  globe.  A  respectable  girl 
like  that — why,  what  was  the  world  coming  to  ?  Sent  gadding 
about  the  country  like  a  trollop,  perched  up  horsily  behind  a 
carter's  whip — this  was  what  little  Jinny  had  been  allowed  to 
grow  up  into  !  And  that  girl  at  "  The  Black  Sheep  " — she  who 
had  looked  so  innocent,  whom  he  had  mentally  seen  as  a  May 
Queen,  crowned  with  garlands,  dancing  girlishly  round  a  Maypole 
— this  was  what  lay  under  her  poetic  semblance.  And  at  the 
same  time — pleasing  and  perturbing  thought — both  the  unsexed 
Carrier  and  the  maidenly  May  Queen  were  in  reality  little  Jinny: 
no  stand-offish  stranger,  needing  deferential  approach,  but — in  a 
way — ^his  very  own  :  the  meek  poppet  whose  cheek  he  had  always 
pinched  patronizingly,  in  whose  eyes  he  had  always  seen  himself 
as  a  grown-up  god. 

Miss  Flippance,  sweeping  out  again,  and  finding  him  still 
hanging  about,  immovable,  had  a  new  thought.  ''  Pardon  me — 
has  my  father  engaged  you  ?  " 

He  coloured  up  in  anger.  "  I  brought  his  bills  in  passing — 
that's  all." 

"  Oh,  I  thought  you  might  be  looking  for  a  job.  There's  this 
drum,  you  know." 

He  could  have  knocked  her  down.  But  she  was  evidently 
quite  in  earnest,  this  outrageous,  humourless  female,  only  second 
in  self-sufficiency  to  Jinny  the  Carrier.  The  world  seemed 
suddenly  emasculated. 

"  I'm  no  musician,"  he  said  surlily. 

"  But  you  look  a  strong  young  man  and  it's  muscle  we  want^ 
not  music.  You'd  only  have  to  stand  here  about  half  an  hour 
a  day.  This  afternoon,  of  course,  you  might  join  the  Bellman 
round  the  town — I've  ordered  him  for  five." 

"  Miss  Flippance,"  said  Will,  mastering  himself  and  speaking 
with  crushing  dignity,  "  have  you  observed  my  clothes  ?  " 

"  They  don't  matter,"  she  assured  him.  "  We  provide  the 
uniform." 

"  Do  I  look,"  he  snorted,  "  like  a  drummer  at  a  dime  show  .?  " 

"  If   you've    come    as    a    walking   gentleman,"    replied   Miss 

Flippance  simply,  "  you've  come  to  the  wrong  shop.     We're  only 


wires.'' 


130  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Oh,  I  know  ail  about  that."  And  he  slashed  savagely  with 
his  stick  at  the  insulting  tambour,  which  uttered  a  bass  roar  of 
agony. 

"  Splendid  !  But  you  might  have  smashed  it !  "  cried  Miss 
Flippance.     "  Where's  the  drumstick  ?  " 

"  Am  I  the  drumstick's  keeper?  "  he  answered,  with  an  odd 
Biblical  reminiscence. 

"  Nincompoops  !  Thickheads  !  Zanies  !  Where's  the  drum- 
stick ?  " 

But  nobody  had  seen  the  drumstick.  Jinny  hadn't  brought 
it,  the  slaves  assured  her.  She  assured  them,  still  more  emphati- 
cally, that  they  had  dropped  it  off  the  drum  in  taking  it  out. 
And  no  inch  of  it  being  visible  where  the  cart  had  stood,  she 
drew  the  deduction  that  it  was  now  speeding  towards  Long 
Bradmarsh. 

She  turned  to  Will.  "  Do  run  after  her — the  men  are  so  busy — • 
she  can't  be  far,  and  she  has  to  stop  every  now  and  again." 

He  glared  at  her.  Then  something  inside  him  whispered  that 
that  was  the  obvious  thing  to  do — ^impishly  to  pretend  to  obey 
her,  and  then  to  keep  her  waiting  for  the  drumstick — eternally. 
Yes,  he  would  be  revenged  on  behalf  of  his  sex. 

"  Yoicks  !  Tally-ho  !  "  he  cried  with  an  advent  of  glee  that 
he  felt  justifiably  malicious.  And,  waving  his  own  stick  wildly, 
he  bounded  with  mock  frenzy  towards  the  field  gate  by  which 
the  cart  had  gone  off. 

"  You  won't  catch  her  like  that,"  bawled  Miss  Flippance  after 
him.  "  Across  the  fields  !  Head  her  off  !  "  But  he  would  not 
take  orders  from  any  woman,  he  told  himself,  so  feigning  deafness 
he  ran  doggedly  into  the  Long  Bradmarsh  road,  and  turning  a 
sharp  elbow,  felt  his  heart  leap  up  to  see  the  now  familiar  cart 
at  a  standstill  before  a  wayside  cottage.  But  even  as  he  gazed 
it  started  afresh. 

He  tore  on  madly.  The  back  of  the  tilt  vanished  round 
another  bend.  "  Following  a  drumstick "  passed  grotesquely 
across  his  mind.  What  an  odd  home-coming  !  What  a  queer 
renewal  of  acquaintance  with  Jinny — after  that  solemn  oath- 
taking  in  the  wagon  ! 

Presently  he  heard  a  wild  scampering  through  the  bushes  on 
his  right,  and  his  canine  friend  of  the  inn  was  leaping  and  frisking 
and  joyously  barking  beside  him.  They  ran  together — owing  to  the 
dog's  leisurely  tangents  and  curvatures  he  could  just  keep  up  with 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  131 

it.  But  with  the  sweat  now  pouring  from  his  forehead,  the  inner 
imp  began  asking  what  he  was  running  for,  since  he  had  already- 
deceived  and  chastised  Miss  Flippance,  left  her  eternally  expec- 
tant. Why  not  now  drop  into  the  pleasant  saunter  home  he 
had  planned  ? 

But  the  poor  dog  was  panting  in  this  heat — he  answered  the 
imp-^it  must  have  run  miles  since  its  meal  in  the  parlour. 
Apoplexy  threatened  perhaps,  hydrophobia  even.  Look  at  its 
lolling  tongue  !  He  snatched  it  up  :  it  must  be  restored  to  its 
inconsiderate  mistress,  to  whom,  at  the  same  time,  a  still  more 
important  rebuke  could  be  administered,  if  indeed  any  vestiges 
of  decency  yet  remained  in  the  minx.  But  the  little  terrier 
struggled  spasmodically  in  his  arms — the  ungrateful  brute  !  He 
must  save  it  from  itself,  then,  just  as  he  must  save  its  mistress 
from  herself.  Clamping  it  to  his  breast  with  iron  muscles,  he 
toiled  frenziedly  forwards.  Then  the  far,  faint  sound  of  a  horn 
came  like  elfin  mocking  laughter  on  the  sultry  air,  and  with  a 
suddeyn  convulsion  the  animal  wrested  itself  free,  and  Will  was 
left  hopelessly  pursuing,  not  the  cart,  but  the  dog.  He  had 
indeed  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  former  slacken  to  receive  the 
latter,  but  the  vehicle  was  wafted  away  again  so  smoothly  that 
to  the  poor  perspiring  pedestrian  Methusalem  appeared  in  his 
original  Mazeppa  role. 

The  chase  ran  along  wide  horizons — great  ploughed  lands  or 
meadows  with  grazing  cattle — the  level  broken  only  by  ricks, 
roofs,  and  trees,  mainly  witch-elms,  with  a  few  poplars.  Some- 
times these  elms  clustered  in  groves,  sometimes  a  few  helped  to 
make  the  hedge-line;  as  often  they  rose  solitary  in  arrogant 
individualism.  To  the  right  was  a  delicious  sense  of  the  saltings 
and  of  mewing  sea-birds ;  and  mysteriously,  as  in  the  heart  of 
the  fields,  red-brown  barge  sails  or  the  tall,  bare  poles  of  vessels 
could  be  seen  upstanding.  And  once  where  the  road  mounted. 
Will  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  Blackwater,  and  ships  floating,  and 
the  dim,  blue  shore  beyond. 

But  at  the  top  of  this  hill  he  was  too  breathed  to  continue. 
He  sat  down,  wiped  his  forehead,  and  surveyed  the  view  ;  far 
from  soothed,  however,  by  its  simple  restfulness.  If  only  his 
father  had  come  to  meet  him,  as  his  letter  had  requested,  he 
thought  savagely,  all  this  wouldn't  have  happened  ! 


132  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 


IX 


Anyhow  there  was  no  need  to  follow  the  glaring  high  road  any- 
longer.  On  the  left  he  could  see  the  clump  of  Steeples  Wood, 
and  he  knew  that  once  he  had  cut  through  that,  he  could  find 
the  swift  field-path  through  Hoppits  that  would  save  miles  of  the 
high  road  and  not  bring  him  out  on  it  till  the  Silverlane  Pump. 
He  strolled  with  a  sense  of  relief  towards  the  wood,  but  hardly 
had  its  green  groves  closed  refreshingly  upon  him  when,  reminding 
himself  he  was  a  trespasser,  he  quickened  his  pace  again,  and 
hurried  through  the  oak  plantations  and  over  the  wonderful 
carpet  of  bluebells  with  but  a  slight  eye  to  the  sylvan  beauty. 

Even  when  he  reached  the  field-path  bounded  bv  the  ditch 
and  the  dog-rose  hedge,  he  did  not  relax  his  speed,  having 
bethought  himself  that  the  poor  horse  would  surely  be  given 
drink  at  the  trough  of  the  Silverlane  Pump,  and  that  there 
would  probably  be  a  delay  at  "The  Silverlane  Arms,"  even  if  he 
should  not  have  succeeded  in  heading  the  Carrier  off  altogether. 
And  from  that  point  she  would  surely  need  his  protection,  so 
lonely  was  the  road  till  you  sighted  Long  Bradmarsh  with  the 
drainage  windmills  and  the  bridge.  And  the  no  less  necessary 
sermon  could  be  combined  with  the  protection. 

He  found  the  wheel  of  the  village  pump  chained  up.  Evidently 
the  water  was  running  scarce.  It  looked  not  unlike  a  gibbet, 
this  tall  pump,  and  he  could  imagine  a  criminal  dangling  from 
the  spout.  There  was  little  water  in  the  trough,  and  the  water- 
butt  of  the  inn  was  almost  equally  dry  ;  a  wayside  mudhole 
haunted  by  geese  represented  a  pool.  He  remembered  these 
arid  villages  in  such  strange  juxtaposition  with  his  own  oozy 
birthplace — ^was  it  here  or  at  Kelcott  that  he  had  made  a  boyish 
fortune,  bringing  water  at  a  halfpenny  a  pint  ?  His  mother,  he 
recalled  with  a  faint  smile,  had  been  against  the  business  because 
Jesus  had  said  to  the  woman  of  Samaria  "  Give  me  to  drink," 
though  he  had  trumped  her  text  with  the  injunction  to  the 
Israelites  :  "  Ye  shall  also  buy  water  of  them  for  money."  It 
all  made  him  super-conscious  of  thirst,  and  he  went  into  the  inn, 
and  ordering  a  pint  of  ale,  inquired  if  the  Carrier  had  passed  by. 

"  Which  way  be  you  a-gooin'  ?  "  said  the  tapster.  It  irritated 
him  to  be  questioned,  and  he  replied  tartly  that  he  was  going 
home.  He  gulped  down  his  liquor  and  put  his  question  to  a 
group  of  children  playing  around  the  pump.     They  scratched 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  133 

their  heads  and  gaped  at  him,  and  the  youngest  put  shy,  chubby 
hands  to  its  smeary  face.  "  The  white  horse  and  the  girl !  "  he 
explained,  and  the  shy  child  started  screaming,  and  a  woman 
burst  from  a  cottage  door  and  dragged  it  within,  glaring  sus- 
piciously at  the  "  furriner." 

A  labourer  riding  a  plough-horse  barebacked,  and  leading 
another,  came  from  the  Bradmarsh  direction.  "  Has  the  Carrier 
passed  you  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  D'ye  want  a  lift  ?  "  was  the  reply. 

He  lost  his  temper.  "  Haven't  you  got  enough  buvsiness  o' 
your  own  ?  " 

"  Not  much,"  said  the  labourer  naively.  "  Ground  be  as  'ard 
as  the  road.     Curous,  baint  it,  arter  all  that  soakin'.  " 

He  replied  more  civilly,  glad  his  rudeness  was  misunderstood. 
"  Yes,  it's  always  either  too  little  or  too  much." 

"  And  ye  can't  sow  unless  'tis  none-or-both,"  added  the 
philosophic  ploughman,  plodding  on.  "  Gimme  a  foUowin' 
toime  !  " 

The  rustic  meant  a  season  in  which  rain  and  sunshine  came  in 
rapid  alternation,  but  Will  ruefully  reflected  that  the  "  followin' 
toime,"  in  the  sense  he  was  having  it,  was  far  from  satisfactory. 

But  at  that  moment  there  was  a  cheerful  bark,  and  that 
inconsistent  dog  was  curveting  around  him,  its  tail  thumping 
wildly  against  hi^  trousers  in  an  ecstasy  of  recognition.  So  he 
was  too  late,  he  thought  with  a  strange  heart-sinking ;  knowing 
I  its  rearguard  habit.  He  pushed  it  away  with  his  foot.  If  the 
^  beast  thought  he  was  going  to  carry  it  again,  it  was  jolly  well 
mistaken.  No  more  cart-chasing  for  him.  His  "  following 
time  "  was  over.  And  as  the  creature  persisted  in  gambolling 
round  his  legs,  he  made  a  swish  in  the  air  with  his  stick  to  drive 
it  on  its  way,  and  it  uttered  a  fearsome  yell ;  it  being  part  of 
Nip's  slyness  to  cry  before  he  was  hurt.  But  for  once  Nip  was 
not  a  laggard,  but  an  advance  courier,  and  Fate  brought 
Methusalem  round  the  corner  at  the  exact  instant  of  his  yell. 

"  How  dare  you  strike  my  dog  ?  "  It  was  an  inauspicious 
reunion.  Jinny  had  checked  Methusalem,  and  her  grey  eyes 
were  blazing  down  from  their  dark  lashes  ;  her  face  framed  in 
its  bonnet  glowed  like  a  dark  flower,  and  he  was  confusedly 
aware  that  that  lonely  hamlet's  high-street  was  suddenly  pullulat- 
ing with  people — the  tapster  and  gapers  at  the  inn  door,  the 
ploughman  looking  backwards,  excited  at  last,  the  little  children 


134  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

mysteriously  out  again  with  their  mother,  and  other  mothers 
and  infants  (in  arms  or  at  skirt)  surging  agitatedly  from  nowhere, 
whether  at  Nip's  cry  or  Jinny's.  Even  the  pump  seemed  to 
have  spouted  an  old  man,  while  an  old  lady  arose,  like  an  ancient 
Venus,  from  the  pond.  And  every  eye,  he  felt,  was  stabbing  at 
the  maltreator  of  Jinny's  animal  ;  the  cackle  seemed  a  sinister 
clamour  as  of  vengeance  mounting  from  that  swarm  of  sym- 
pathizers. 

"  I  didn't  strike  him,"  he  answered  sulkily.  Clearly  she  had 
not  recognized  him — a  position  not  without  its  advantages. 
Doubtless  the  raw  youth  of  her  childish  memories  was  effectually 
buried  beneath  this  manly  form,  set  off  by  the  elegant  London 
suit,  this  well-barbered  head,  and  the  face  that  had  exchanged 
freckles  for  the  stamp  of  experience.  "  As  a  matter  of  fact,"  he 
added,  "  I  fed  the  brute  at  the  inn." 

"  Which  brute  ?  "retorted  Jinny  sharply.  But  at  this  moment 
Nip,  who  had  been  calmly  lapping  the  dregs  of  the  pool,  intervened 
by  leaping  up  to  lick  Will's  hand. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  she  murmured,  coming  to  a  standstill. 

"  Granted,"  he  said,  not  to  be  outdone  in  graciousness,  and 
beginning  to  enjoy  the  advantage  her  ignorance  of  his  identity 
gave  him.  "  But  that's  no  proof  I  haven't  beaten  him.  You 
remember  the  saying  : 

A  zvomatiy  a  dog^  and  a  walnut-tree^ 

The  more  you  heat  them,  the  better  they  he^ 

"That's  all  nonsense,"  said  Jinny,  bridling  up  again. 

He  changed  the  subject  quickly.  "  Have  you  got  a  drum- 
stick ?  " 

"  Gracious  1     Do  you  want  to  try  ?  " 

He  laughed.  "  It's  for  the  drum  at  the  show.  Miss  Flippance 
thinks  you  didn't  deliver  it." 

"  Why,  it  was  tied  on  the  drum.  The  fool  of  a  man  must  have 
dropped  it — if  he  hasn't  poked  it  inside  the  drum.  Did  you  look 
under  the  benches  ?  " 

"  No.  That's  it  !  I  remember  now  seeing  the  man  take  the 
drum  inside  by  mistake.  He  must  have  dropped  it  on  the 
way  back." 

"  Don't  you  think  it  would  have  been  more  sensible  to  look 
before  you  leaped — especially  such  a  long  leap  !  And  what  a 
pace  you  must  have  come  in  this  heat  !  " 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  135 

He  flushed  faintly.     "  I'm  a  good  walker.     I  know  the  cuts.'' 

"  Well,  if  you  get  back  as  quick  as  you  came,  there  won't  be 
much  time  lost."  She  clucked  up  Methusalem.  "  Good  after- 
noon— hope  you'll  find  your  stick,  and  that  you'll  drum-in  a 
good  house." 

What  !  She  too  thought  him  capable  of  being  a  drum-banger, 
a  minion  of  marionettes.  Had  women  then  no  eye — no  percep- 
tion of  clothes — as  well  as  no  humour  ?  The  mob  was  melting 
away  under  their  amiable  parley,  but  he  now  rallied  it  afresh  : 
"  Stop  !  "  he  called  desperately  after  Jinny.     "  Stop  !  " 

But  Nip's  joyous  bark  at  the  resumption  of  the  journey 
drowned  all  lesser  remarks,  and  again  the  cart  receded  on  the 
horizon — an  horizon  he  knew  houseless  and  arid,  no  region  for  a 
lonely,  good-looking  girl.  Let  poor  pockmarked  Polly  Flippance 
brave  the  wild,  if  female  carriers  there  must  be  :  not  his  Jinny. 
No,  he  must  reveal  himself  at  the  next  stop,  he  must  remonstrate, 
protest. 

But  the  trouble  was  that  the  thing  w^ould  not  stop,  and  that 
there  would  be  no  stop  now — he  knew — for  several  miles.  Per- 
spiring, panting,  hallooing  and  waving  his  stick  and  utterly 
oblivious  of  the  scandalized  street,  he  pursued  at  his  swiftest,  and 
Methusalem  being  no  serious  competitor  in  the  long  run.  Jinny 
heard  him  at  last,  and  looking  back  through  the  tilt  over  the 
dwindled  packages,  saw  the  pitiful,  gesturing  figure,  and  to  his 
infinite  relief  the  cart  drew  up. 

"  What  have  you  lost  now  ?  "  she  called.  "  Your  sandwich- 
boards  ?  "  * 

"  I'm  not  going  back  to  Miss  Flippance,"  he  panted,  "  Fm 
going  Bradmarsh  way." 

"  Then  why  ever  didn't  you  say  so  ?  "  she  replied  calmly. 
"  Jump  up  !  " 

Jump  up  ?  She  asked  a  strange  young  man  to  jump  up  ? 
Then  what  else  could  she  have  done  if  he  had  said  who  he  was — 
a  fact  of  which  he  had  indeed  been  just  about  to  make  royal 
proclamation. 

"  You  take  passengers  ?  "  he  gasped.  He  remembered  now 
that  Joey  had  told  him  the  cart  would  take  him,  but  then  he  had 
had  no  idea  that  "  her  "  was  not  the  vehicle. 

She  was  equally  surprised  :  "  Why  else  did  you  run  after  me  ?  " 

Run  after  her  ?  He  did  not  like  the  phrase.  Girls  ran  after 
men — girls  of  a  sort — to  some  extent  girls  of  every  sort  :    that 


136  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  the  doctrine  in  his  set.  And  yet  he  had  run  after  her — it 
called  for  explanation.  "  I  wasn't  running  after  you,"  he  said 
slowly,  "  it  was  only  that — that  I  couldn't  believe  my  eyes  to 
see  you  like  that." 

^'  Like  what  ?  "     She  was  frankly  puzzled. 
**  Driving   about    alone   in   this   God-forsaken   part.     It's — " 
scandalous,  he  was  about  to  say,  but  before  the  glimmering  fire 
in  her  eyes  he  altered  the  word — "  it's  dangerous." 

"  Dangerous  !  "  Her  little  laugh  rippled  out.  "  I  thought 
you  said  you  knew  these  parts." 

"  So  I  do — I'm  an  Essex  man,  even  though  I  mayn't  look  it, 
having  been  half  round  the  world." 

'*  Have  you  now  ?  Well,  it's  the  big  cities  that  are  dangerous, 
Gran'fer  says." 

"  Maybe  he's  right,"  he  admitted,  wincing  a  little  before  the 
candid  grey  eyes.  "  But  don't  you  understand  that  a  woman 
carrier  is — "  again  he  toned  down  his  word — "  outlandish." 

Her  amusement  danced  in  her  eyes.  "  Inlandish,  I  suppose 
you  mean." 

"  Don't  laugh,"  he  said,  forgetting  that  the  unrevealed  Will 
had  no  right  to  that  tone.     "  You  know  it's  an  unwomanly 
occupation." 
"  Laughing  ?  " 

"  You  know  what  I  mean.  For  one  thing  a  woman  can't 
know  much  about  horses — and  she  oughtn't  to  have  to  do  with 
'em  anyhow — it's  not  natural." 

"  May  she  have  to  do  with  donkeys  ?  "  Jinny  inquired 
sweetly. 

He  frowned.     "  Chaff's  no  good." 

"  But  I  never  give  my  horse  any — do  I,  Methusalem  dear  ?  " 
Such  word-mockery  was  bewildering  to  his  simpler  brain.     He 
opened  his  mouth,    but   nothing  came,  and  his  vexation   only 
increased  for  finding  no  vent. 

"  May  she  have  to  do  with  pigs  ?  "  queried  Jinny  again. 
"  Pigs  are  at  home,"  he  conceded. 

"  Not  always,"  she  said  demurely.  '^  I  meet  lots  on  this  very 
road." 

"  And  you  might  meet  worse  than  pigs  on  a  lonely  road  like 

this — you  might  meet  men " 

"  Like  I've  met  one  now." 

"  Yes,  but  it  happens  to  be  me  !  "  he  said,  again  all  but  for- 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  137 

getting  her  ignorance  of  his  identity.     "  Usually  it   would  be 
dangerous." 

"  Well,  but  wouldn't  it  be  just  as  dangerous  for  a  male 
carrier  ?  " 

"  Not  at  all.     He  can  fight." 

"  And  if  he  met  a  woman  ?  "  she  said  slyly. 

''  There's  no  danger  in  a  woman." 

"  Then  why  are  you  running  away  from  Miss  Flippance ,?  " 

"  Miss  Flippance  !  "  he  cried  in  angry  astonishment.  "  Who 
says  I'm  running  away  from  Miss  Flippance  ?  " 

"  Well,  you've  run  from  her  to  me.  And  if  you  say  you 
weren't  running  after  me,  you  must  have  been  running  away 
from  her." 

"  Don't  you  try  to  bamboozle  me.  I  tell  you  I've  been  half 
round  the  world,  and  nowhere  have  I  seen  a  woman  carrier," 

''  If  you'd  ha'  stayed  at  home  you  would  have,"  said  Jinny. 

"  So  it  seems.  And  in  America  there  are  those  Bloomerites — 
come  over  here,  too,  I  hear,  nowadays,  the  hussies.  Want  to 
wear  the  breeches." 

"  Do  they  ?  "  inquired  Jinny  with  genuine  interest.  "  I've 
often  thought  it  would  be  more  convenient  for  me  jumping  up 
and  down,  and  there  would  be  yards  of  stuff  less.  Some  of  those 
Chipstone  ladies  quite  scavenge  the  streets  with  their  long  skirts, 
padded  out  by  all  those  petticoats,  don't  you  think  ?  " 

He  grew  almost  as  auburn  as  his  hair  :  such  secrets  of  the 
toilette,  babbled  by  a  young  girl  he  still  thought  good  at  heart, 
outraged  his  sense  of  decorum. 

"  No,  I  don't  think  !  "  he  answered  angrily. 

"  WeU,  try,"  she  suggested  sweetly.  "  Put  yourself  into  our 
place." 

"  It's  you  putting  yourselves  into  our  place  that's  the  trouble," 
he  retorted.     "  What  will  women  be  up  to  next,  I  wonder." 

Here  it  was  Jinny's  turn  to  flare  up.  She  had  never — it  has 
been  already  remarked — thought  of  herself  as  up  to  anything, 
rarely  even  thought  of  herself  as  a  woman,  least  of  all  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  her  sex.  But  challenged  now  to  her  face  for  the 
first  time,  she  felt  she  must  hold  the  pass  for  all  womanhood. 

"  We  women  will  be  up  to  whatever  we  please." 

"  Not  if  you  want  to  please  the  men." 

Jinny's  young  face  flashed  fire  and  roses.  "  And  who  wants 
to  please  the  men  ?  " 


138  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

He  laughed  complacently.  "  I  never  met  a  woman  who 
didn't." 

The  girl's  fire  died  into  cold  contempt.  "  I  don't  think  you 
know  much  about  women." 

"  Me  ?  Why,  I've  knocked  about  since  you  were  in  pinafores 
— and  pelisses  !  " 

*'  I  shouldn't  be  surprised,  Mr.  Drummer,"  said  Jinny  with 
judicial  frigidity,  "  if  you  knew  less  about  women  than  I  know 
about  horses." 

"  I've  seen  half  the  world,  I  teU  you." 

She  flicked  up  Methusalem.     "  But  not  the  better  half." 

He  winced  again.  "  Fiddlesticks  !  "  was  all  he  could  find  to 
answer. 

"  Drumsticks  !  "  rejoined  Jinny  gaily,  and  with  a  mocking 
flourish  of  her  horn,  she  receded  afresh. 

Something  stronger  than  his  will  now  shot  him  forward  crying  : 
"  I  say,  Jinny  !  "  He  meant  by  crying  that  old  familiar  name 
to  disclose  himself,  and  then  to  have  it  out  with  her,  side  by  side 
on  the  driving-board. 

She  turned  her  head.  "  Do  you  want  to  jump  on  or  don't 
you  ?  "  she  called. 

It  was  the  last  straw.  Jinny — he  had  forgotten — was  not  a 
name  privileged  for  the  friend  of  her  pelisse  and  pinafore  days  : 
any  male  might  use  it,  just  as  any  wayside  rough  might  abuse 
its  owner.  "  I  don't,"  he  shouted  savagely.  "  I'll  never 
patronize  a  woman  carrier." 

"  A  dashing  young  lad  from  Buckingham  !  "  She  had  started 
singing,  whether  to  herself  or  at  him,  he  could  not  tell,  and  he 
strode  behind  the  cart  almost  as  rapidly  as  Methusalem  before 
it,  to  find  out  whether  she  was  still  answering  back. 

But  apparently  she  had  forgotten  him — that  was  the  most 
pungent  repartee  of  all — and  the  gaiety  of  the  chorus  only  added 
salt  to  the  smart : 

"  Still  he'd  singjol  de  rol  iddle  ol. 
Still  he'd  singjol  de  rol  lay " 

The  thin  silver  treble  reminded  him  incongruously  of  her 
Sunday-school  singing,  and  the  revival  of  that  long-faded  picture 
of  himself  driving  her  home  only  emphasized  the  jarring  present. 
He  turned  furiously  down  Plashy  Walk,  where  the  rollick  of  the 
chorus  soon  ceased  to  penetrate  and  the  white  fragrance  of  the 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  139 

wonderful  hawthorn  avenue  made  a  soothing  passage-way.  His 
tongue  felt  acrid  with  anger,  ale,  and  running,  and  Frog  Farm, 
with  the  faces  of  his  parents,  now  began  to  loom  more  emotionally 
before  him,  because  of  the  tea  as  well  as  the  tenderness  awaiting 
him.  For  neither  of  these  luxuries  was  likely  to  be  absent,  even 
if  his  letter — or  his  father — had  gone  astray.  Let  her  protect 
herself,  this  minx  of  a  carrier.  Time's  odd  changeling  for  his 
sober  little  Jinny.  Serve  her  right  if  some  horrid  instrument  of 
fate  should  take  down  her  pride ! 

By  the  time  he  had  come  through  the  mile  of  hawthorn,  and 
defied  the  Plashy  Hall  dog  with  his  stick,  she  had  passed  out  of 
his  thoughts,  and  his  indignation  against  her  had  changed  to 
indignation  against  the  impudent  attempt — obvious  from  the 
notice-boards — to  deny  him  and  the  public  this  old-established 
right-of-way.  Things  would  not  have  got  even  thus  far  had  he 
remained  in  Little  Bradmarsh,  he  was  thinking,  and  he  was 
already  brooding  over  a  plan  of  campaign  as  he  was  climbing 
over  the  stile  back  into  the  high  road.  And  then  his  vaulting 
leg  remained  suspended  an  instant  in  air  in  sheer  astonishment. 
Jinny  was  facing  him  from  her  perch  of  vantage,  smiling  sweetly 
from  her  witching  bonnet,  her  cart  athwart  the  road,  in  fact  he 
could  hardly  step  off  the  stile  without  treading  on  Methusalem's 
toes.  Relaxing  his  motion,  he  sat  down  on  the  stile,  staring 
at  her. 

X 

"  Why,  Will !  "  exclaimed  Jinny,  and  there  was  now  a  strange 
softness  in  her  face  and  voice.  "  How  stupid  of  me  not  to 
recognize  you  when  I've  got  your  box  all  the  time  !  " 

His  mind,  still  perturbed  about  the  right-of-way,  and  bent 
now  upon  home,  could  not  adjust  itself  so  suddenly  to  the  new 
situation.  Again  his  mouth  opened  without  issue.  Her  smile 
faded. 

"  I'm  Daniel  Quarles's  granddaughter,"  she  said  with  a  little 
quaver.     "  Little  Jinny  of  Blackwater  Hall." 

"  So  you've  remembered  me  at  last  !  "  His  voice  came  out 
harsh,  though  inwardly  he  was  melted  by  this  new  sweetness. 

"  Then  did  you  know  me  all  the  time  ?  " 

"  Of  course — the  moment  I  clapped  eyes  on  you."  He  was  not 
consciously  romanticizing. 

"  That's  what  I've  been  thinking  as  I  waited  here  for  you.     I'm 


140  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

so  glad.  Because  that  shows  you  were  only  teasing  me,  saying 
all  those  horrid  things."  Then  a  new  thought  struck  her  to 
self-mockery.  "  Of  course — I'm  getting  silly — it  wasn't  so 
wonderful  of  you  recognizing  me,  with  the  name  of  Daniel 
Quarles  on  the  cart."  And  she  laughed  merrily.  "  Do  you 
know  why  I  didn't  recognize  you  ?  It  wasn't  only  Miss  Flippance 
put  me  off,  and  that  I  couldn't  connect  you  with  drums  and 
marionettes — it  was  you  yourself  that  blocked  the  way." 

"  I  don't  understand." 

"  The  old  you,  I  mean — I  was  thinking  about  him  all  the  time 
we  were  talking,  and  that  funny  new  you  wasn't  like  him  one 
bit." 

"  Thinking  of  me  !  "  He  was  touched.  ..."  Whatever  made 
you  think  of  me  ?  " 

"  Didn't  I  just  tell  you  I've  got  your  box  ?  And  of  course  I 
knew  you  were  coming  back.  We've  been  expecting  you  for 
days." 

"  Oh,  then  mother  did  get  my  letter  !  "  His  latent  ill-humour 
flowed  into  the  new  channel. 

"  Of  course." 

"  Then  why  didn't  dad  come  to  meet  me  ?  " 

Her  mouth  twitched  humorously  at  the  corners  with  the 
suspicion  the  letter  was  still  unread,  but  she  replied  :  "  I  suppose 
because  he's  old  and  hasn't  got  a  trap  any  more,  and  he  knew 
that  Tuesday  was  my  day.     Jump  up,  I'm  ever  so  late  1  " 

He  shook  *his  head.     "  I  can't  jump  up." 

"  Why,  what's  the  matter.  Will  ?  "  Her  voice  was  anxious 
and  tender.     "  Have  you  hurt  your  ankle,  running  ?  " 

"  No,  no  !  "  he  said  petulantly.  "  Didn't  you  hear  me  say  I'd 
never  patronize  a  woman  carrier  ?  " 

She  smiled  in  relief.  "  Yes — I  heard  you  say  it.  But  that 
was  the  silly  you." 

His  face  hardened.     "  Silly  or  sensible,  I  stick  to  my  word." 

"  Drumsticks  !  "  she  mocked  again.  "  Jump  up  and  tell  me 
all  about  your  affair  with  Miss  Flippance." 

"  Don't  be  saucy.  Jinny.     It  don't  become  you:" 

For  the  life  of  him  he  could  not  accept  her  as  grown  up,  much 
less  as  an  equal,  though  she  sat  on  high,  dominating  the  situation, 
whip  in  hand  and  horn  at  girdle,  spick  and  span  and  cool ;  while 
he,  astride  the  stile,  was  a  forlorn  figure,  with  dusty  shoes  and 
hot,  lowering  look. 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  141 

"  It  becomes  me  as  much  as  silliness  does  you,"  said  Jinny. 

"  I  don't  see  the  silliness." 

"  Why,  you  can't  live  a  week  at  Frog  Farm  without  patronizing 
me.  Who  else  is  there  ?  There  isn't  hardly  a  trap  to  be  had 
even  miles  around.  Why  there  was  a  young  man  I  drove  out  to 
Frog  Farm  last  week,  and  a  fine  to-do  he  had  getting  home  !  " 

It  was  not  calculated  to  soothe  him.  "  And  what  need  had 
you  to  drive  a  young  man  ?  " 

"  It  was  for  Maria — your  mother's  pig.  She  was  ill  ;  her 
whole  litter  might  have  been  lost." 

He  frowned  more  darkly.  Pigs,  he  had  but  just  admitted, 
might  reasonably  come  into  the  feminine  ambit :  still,  if  girls  did 
get  to  know  coarse  facts,  they  might  at  least  have  the  decency 
not  to  talk  about  them.  "And  did  he  call  you  Jinny  ?  "  he 
grunted. 

"  He  didn't  call  me  Maria." 

"  Well,  traps  or  no  traps,"  he  said  sullenly,  "  you'll  get  no 
orders  from  me.  I've  fended  for  myself  in  the  Canadian  back- 
woods, where  there  wasn't  even  a  woman  to  sew  on  buttons,  and 
I  certainly  don't  need  one  now." 

But  she  was-  still  smiling.  "  Do  you  know  the  song  of  the 
dashing  young  lad  from  Buckingham  ?  " 

"  I  know  you  do.     But  what's  that  to  do  with  it  ?  " 

She  re-started  the  merry  tune,  but  markedly  altered  the  words- 1 

"  J  dashing  young  lad  from — Canada^ 
Once  a  great  wager  did  lay 
T^hat  he^d  never  use  "Jinny  the  Carrier^ 
But — he  gave  her  an  order  straightway  !  " 

"  No,  he  won't." 

"  Don't  interrupt.     You've  already  given  it. 

But  still  he^d  singfol  de  rol  iddle  ol " 

"  What  order  have  I  given  you  ?  " 

"  To  carry  your  box,  of  course —  .  , 

Still  he^d  singfol  de  rol  lay " 

"  But  that  was  before  I  had  the  ghost  of  an  idea- 
"  Do  join  in  the  chorus  : 

Still  he'^d  singfol  de  rol  iddle  ol " 


j> 


142  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  ril  have  my  trunk  at  once  I  "  he  cried  furiously,  and  sprang 
off  the  stile. 

"  Fol  de  Tol  arilol  lay  I  "  she  wound  up  with  easy  enjoyment. 

"  Give  me  my  trunk,"  he  commanded  again. 

"  What — on  this  lonely  road — in  this  weather  !  " 

"  That's  my  business  1  " 

"  No,  it  isn't — ^it's  mine."  She  touched  up  Methusalem  and 
turned  his  eager  nose  homewards. 

Will  ran  round  with  the  turning  animal. 

"  Give  me  my  trunk  !  "     He  was  white  with  determination. 

"  And  don't  you  call  that  an  order  ?  "  She  cracked  her  great 
Vv'hip. 

He  sprang  to  the  tail-board,  hanging  on  by  one  arm,  and 
clutched  at  the  trunk  with  the  other,  dragging  it  out.  But  he 
had  forgotten  to  reckon  with  the  faithful  guardian.  Nip, 
excited  as  at  a  rabbit,  sprang  from  the  basket  in  which  he  had 
been  resting  his  four  weary  limbs  and  growled  ominously,  and 
as  the  burglarious  arm  did  not  draw  back,  the  terrier — 0  almost 
human  ingratitude  ! — sprang  at  it  and  made  his  beautiful  white 
teeth  meet  in  its  fleshy  middle. 

"  You  little  beast !  "  Alarmed  more  for  his  finery  than  his 
flesh,  he  snatched  back  the  elegant  London  sleeve  and  dropped 
off  the  cart,  which  soon  disappeared  down  a  grim  and  lonely 
lane. 

XI 

He  examined  the  wound  in  his  coat,  and  finding  to  his  relief 
that  it  could  be  neatly  patched  up,  he  stripped  off  the  garment 
and  surveyed  his  abraded  skin,  tooth-marked  and  red-flecked  ; 
Nip's  signature  in  blood.  Then  the  horrible  thought  of  hydro- 
phobia— he  had  witnessed  a  dreadful  case  in  Montreal — popped 
again  into  his  mind  :  after  all,  it  was  as  hot  as  July,  and  no 
sane  dog  would  have  behaved  so  disgracefully !  And  then, 
pricked  up  by  the  sound  of  the  horn,  which  came  vaunting  and 
taunting  from  the  lane,  he  started  running  after  the  cart  yet 
once  more  :  he  must  find  out  if  the  dog  would  drink.  But  even 
the  rumbling  of  the  vehicle  could  no  longer  be  heard,  and  he 
was  slackening  hopelessly  when  he  became  aware  how  involuted 
was  this  lane,  and  that  by  trespassing  across  a  ploughed  field  he 
could  gain  several  furlongs.  Bounding  over  the  ditch  with  his 
coat  slung  over  his  arm,  and  nearly  tearing  it  afresh  in  breaking 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  143 

through  the  blackberry  hedge,  he  ran  as  recklessly  as  a  fox- 
hunter  across  the  furrows,  breaking  out  again  like  a  footpad 
when  he  heard  Methusalem's  leisurely  trot,  and  catching  that 
unreluctant  animal  by  the  beribboned  headstall.  Jinny  mani- 
fested no  surprise. 

"  I  thought  you'd  get  over  your  silliness,"  she  said,  smiling. 
"  Jump  up  then  !  " 

"  I'm  not  jumping  up  !  "  He  was  angrier  and  hotter  than 
ever.     "  Fve  come  to  give  your  dog  a  drink." 

"  Eh.  ?     But  we've  passed  '  The  Silverlane  Arms.'  " 

"  This  is  no  joking  matter.     He  must  have  water." 

"  He  doesn't  need  any.  Surely  I  can  look  after  my  own  dog — 
that's  not  a  man's  place,  too,  is  it  ?  " 

"  It's  not  a  question  of  that — but  if  he  doesn't  drink,  it  may 
be  fatal." 

"  Nonsense.  A  kind  cottager  offered  him  water  only  a  mile 
back — ^he  didn't  want  it.  .  .  .  What's  the  matter  ?  You're 
looking  so  strange.  .  .  .  Have  you  had  a  sunstroke  ?  "  The 
alarm!  in  her  voice  reflected  the  alarm  in  his  face,  and  his  alarm 
was  in  turn  augmented  by  hers.  He  had  a  weird  vision  of  that 
man  in  Montreal,  thrown  into  convulsions  by  the  sound  of  a 
splash  and  trying  to  bite  his  attendants,  and  a  ghastly  memory 
came  to  him  of  a  Bradmarsh  woman  who  had  frizzled  for  her 
foaming  child  the  liver  of  the  dog  that  had  bitten  it.  "  Suppose 
your  dog  should  be  mad  ?  "  he  asked,  with  white  lips  that  already 
felt  frothy. 

"  Nip  ?     Nonsense." 

"  He  bit  me." 

"  Oh,  I'm  so  sorry.     Where  ?     Let  me  see." 

"  I  won't." 

"  But  Nip  never  bites." 

"  All  the  more  suspicious.     Try  him  with  some  water,  please." 

"  Where  can  I  get  water  ?     Nip  finds  his  own." 

"  You  mean  to  say  you  don't  carry  water  ?  " 

"  I'm  not  a  water-carrier." 

"  How  can  you  laugh  ?  It's  a  question  of  life  and  death. 
Surely  there  must  be  a  pond  somewhere." 

"  You  know  there's  nothing  hereabouts.  Why,  you  used  to 
come  to  Kelcott  to  sell  water  at  a  halfpenny  a  pint.  Don't  you 
remember  ?  You  bought  me  a  monkey-on- a-s tick  out  of  the 
profits." 


144  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  How  you  babble  !     Then  I  must  go  in  suspense  ?  " 

"  Drumsticks  !  Here,  Nip  !  "  The  dog  was  in  her  lap  in  a 
twinkling.  She  pulled  off  her  driving-glove  and  thrust  her 
fingers  into  its  mouth.     "  Bite,  Nip,  bite." 

Will  felt  his  first  conscious  flash  of  romance  in  all  that  fagging 
chase.     It  was  like  dying  together. 

But  Nip's  teeth  refused  to  close  on  his  mistress's  fingers — 
instead  he  growled  ominously  at  Will. 

"  Bite,  you  naughty  dog  !  "  And  she  pressed  his  reluctant 
teeth  together. 

"  There  !  "  She  held  down  towards  Will  two  fingers  faintly 
ridged  in  red  and  white.  But  instead  of  feeling  a  reassuring 
sanity,  an  impulse  he  felt  really  mad  streamed  through  his  veins 
to  seize  the  little  fingers  in  his  strong  hands  and  to  pull  her 
down  from  the  seat  of  the  mighty,  down  towards  the  inner 
breast  pocket  that  held  his  bank-notes.  But  his  stick  and 
his  coat  and  Methusalem's  bridle,  all  of  which  he  was  holding 
simultaneously,  cluttered  up  his  hands  sufficiently  to  clog  the 
impulse. 

"  That  proves  nothing,"  he  said  sulkily. 

"  And  wasn't  he  lapping  at  the  pool  after  you  struck  him  ?  " 

"  Ah,  that's  true."     His  face  lit  up. 

"  Then  you  did  strike  him  ?  " 

"  Don't  tease.  Yes,  I'd  forgotten,  he  lapped  then,  or  rather  I 
scarcely  noticed  it." 

"  I  suppose  you  shut  your  eyes  when  going  for  him,  just  like 
a  bull  does." 

"  I  didn't  go  for  him,  I  tell  you.     I  just  swished  my  stick." 

"  Well,  if  you'd  kept  your  eyes  open,  you'd  have  seen  him 
drinking  and  saved  your  fright." 

He  was  disappointed  as  well  as  irritated.  "  Then  when  you 
let  him  bite  you,  you  knew  there  was  no  danger." 

"  There's  never  any  danger  on  these  roads — didn't  I  tell  you 
so  ?  Why,  there  was  more  danger  in  that  monkey  you  gave  me, 
for  I  sucked  the  paint  off." 

"  I  don't  remember  giving  you  any  monkey." 

"  I  didn't  want  a  monkey,  but  you  maie  me  take  it — like  that 
oath  in  the  wagon.     Perhaps  you've  forgotten  that  too." 

"  I  can  remember  giving  you  a  kiss,"  he  jerked  defiantly. 

"  That  I  can't  remember,"  said  Jinny  quietly. 

"  Suppose  you've  had  so  many  since." 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  145 

"  Lots  !  "  said  Jinny.  "  Good-bye  again,  if  you're  so  silly. 
Gee  up,  Methusalem  !  " 

But  he  clung  to  the  bridle  and  was  dragged  along,  to  Nip's 
shrilled  agitation. 

"  Let  go,"  said  Jinny.     "  Don't  be  silly." 

"  Not  till  I  have  mv  trunk." 

"That's  sillier  stiU." 

"Give  me  my  trunk." 

"  I  think  you  have  gone  mad.  Will." 

"  That's  not  your  affair,  Miss  Quarles,  I  want  my  trunk." 

"  I  was  ordered  to  deliver  it  at  Frog  Farm." 

"  xA.nd  I  order  you  to  deliver  it  to  me." 

"  Let  go.""     She  cracked  her  whip  in  his  direction. 

"  You  little  spitfire  !  If  you  touch  me  with  that  whip  I'll 
have  an  action  against  you — as  well  as  against  your  dog." 

"  Let  go  my  horse  then." 

"  I'm  within  my  legal  rights,  as  any  male  carrier  would  know. 
I  demand  my  trunk." 

"  And  I  demand  my  horse.     Let  go  !  " 

"  I  won't."  He  was  running  along  with  it  now,  keeping  pace 
with  the  mystified  Methusalem. 

"  Oh,  Will !  "  she  cried.  "  And  you  said  that  on  a  lonely  road 
I  might  meet  a  man." 

"  Well — you  have  now  !  "  he  said  viciously. 

"  Yes — the  first  in  all  my  life  to  give  me  trouble." 

That  hurt  worse  than  any  whip.  He  loosed  the  festive  bridle, 
staggering  a  little,  and  the  cart  rolled  past  him.  Only  what  was 
that  little  object  in  the  road  ? 

Ah,  in  the  altercation  she  had  forgotten  to  put  on  her  glove 
again  after  that  dramatic  offer  of  her  fingers  to  the  dog — it  had 
tumbled  down.  'Twould  pay  her  out  to  lose  it,  he  thought 
savagely.  However,  he  thrust  it  into  the  inner  waistcoat  pocket 
where  his  paper  fortune  reposed  so  comfortingly.  But  as  again 
he  saw  the  tail-board  with  his  now  protruding  box  vanishing 
round  a  corner,  a  blind  rage  began  to  possess  him.  Surely  he  was 
not  thus  entirely  to  be  thwarted  and  overridden.  Surely,  at 
least,  he  would  not  endure  her  actual  delivery  of  his  box  at  Frog 
Farm.  No,  he  must  head  her  off  again,  if  only  outside  his  own 
gate.  Across  his  border  a  woman  carrier  must  in  no  circum- 
stances be  countenanced.  And  once  more  the  unfortunate  Will 
Flynt  ploughed  through  the  hedges  and  meadows,  not  always 

K 


146  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

remembering  the  prickly  places  ;  and  finally  chased  by  a  bull 
on  which  he  had  to  turn  several  times  with  his  coat  and  his 
stick,  just  like  a  toreador ;  though,  remembering  what  Jinny  had 
just  said  about  the  bull  shutting  its  eyes,  he  dodged  it  at  the 
charging  crises,  and  thus  saved  both,  coat  and  skin.  But  he  was 
forced  to  scramble  ignominiously  over  a  fence  into  the  high 
road,  still  a  good  mile  from  Bradmarsh  Bridge,  at  the  very 
moment  the  cart  came  clattering  up. 

But  if  Jinny  had  observed  the  Spanish  bull-fight  she  gave  no 
sign.  What  she  said,  as  she  reined  in  Methusalem,  was  much 
more  surprising. 

"  I've  been  thinking  you  were  within  your  legal  right,  Will. 
Fm  sorry.  A  carrier  must  deliver  goods  as  ordered.  So  if 
you're  still  silly !  " 

If  she  had  stopped  before  the  final  clause,  he  might  have  been 
touched  by  the  unexpected  surrender.  As  it  was,  he  only  said 
icily,  "  How  much  do  I  owe  you  ?  " 

"  Sixpence,"  she  said  as  frigidly,  "  unless  you'd  like  a  reduction 
for  my  not  taking  it  all  the  way." 

"No,  thank  you."  He  passed  the  coin,  grazing  her  warm 
fingers. 

"  By  the  way,  you  didn't  happen  to  see  my  glove  ? "  she  said. 

"  Your  glove  ?  "  he  repeated.  Why,  indeed,  should  he  fetch 
and  carry  for  her  ?  Let  her  be  punished  for  her  negligence.  He 
moved  towards  his  box. 

"  Oh,  well — I  suppose  it'll  be  there  on  Friday,"  she  said. 
"  I'm  the  only  person  who  ever  goes  that  cut." 

"  Drumsticks  aren't  the  only  things  that  are  dropped,"  he 
observed  maliciouslv. 

"  No,"  she  agreed  simply.  She  did  not  even  seem  to  remember 
how  she  had  trounced  "  that  fool  of  a  man.^^  No  sense  of  humour 
in  the  sex,  he  reflected  again. 

"  Do  hold  the  brute  !  "  he  cried,  for  Nip  was  again  showing  his 
teeth  in  defence  of  the  box. 

"  If  you  kept  off  a  bull,  you  don't  need  protection  against  a 
terrier,"  she  replied,  and  to  his  further  amazement  there  was  a 
note  of  admiration  in  her  voice. 

"  The  weaker  the  thing  the  harder  it  is  to  fight,"  he  rejoined 
significantly.  He  had  his  back  now  to  the  cart,  and  he  hoisted 
his  trunk  upon  it. 

"  You're  not  going  to  carry  it  ?  "     There  was  incredulity  in 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  147 

her  voice,  for  it  was  a  box  that  looked  nearly  as  long  as   him- 
self. 

"  Who  else  ?  "  He  shifted  the  box  to  his  right  shoulder, 
which  he  had  padded  with  his  coat. 

"  I  thought  you'd  go  home  and  get  a  truck  or  something."* 

"  And  leave  it  on  the  road  ?  " 

"  It's  just  as  safe  as  my  glove." 

"  There's  no  safety  for  either,"  he  said  oracularly,  "  if  a  man 
like  me  comes  along."  And  he  swaggered  forwards  with  his 
huge  load. 

"  Why,  you're  as  strong  as  the  bull !  "  said  Jinny. 

''  I  am."     He  was  flattered. 

^'  And  as  obstinate  as  a  mule  !  " 

He  increased  his  pace. 

''  Good-bye,  WiU  !  " 

He  did  not  answer. 

Methusalem  caught  him  up.  "  Since  you  are  going  to  Frog 
Farm,"  said  the  Carrier,  "  why  not  take  your  folks'  groceries  too  ? 
I  don't  usually  get  'em  till  Friday,  but  when  I  got  your  order  to 
go  there  to-day !  " 

"  Why  should  I  do  your  jobs  ?  " 

"  Just  what  I  told  you.  You  can't  live  a  week  at  Frog  Farm 
without  me." 

"  Give  me  the  parcel."  His  forehead  was  already  beaded  with 
perspiration,  but  his  left  hand  heroically  held  out  his  stick  : 
"  Slide  the  string  on  this." 

She  shook  her  head.  "  Still  he^d  sing  fol  de  rol  lay,^'  she 
trilled,  and  in  a  minute  he  was  hopelessly  left  behind.  The  road 
had  already  begun  the  ascent  towards  Long  Bradmarsh,  but  he 
heard  her  goading  Methusalem  to  greater  efforts,  as  though  in 
fear  lest  he  should  repent  under  the  burden  of  his  obstinacy. 

XII 

.  As  soon  as  she  was  safely  out  of  sight.  Will,  breathing  heavily, 
slackened  his  showy  pace,  and  very  soon  lowered  his  load 
altogether  and  sat  down  upon  it,  while  he  wiped  his  streaming 
countenance.  The  physical  relief  was  great.  A  lark  was  singing 
overhead  and  his  eyes  followed  it  restfuUy  till  he  couldn't  tell 
whether  the  throb  was  singing  or  the  song  throbbing.  He  must 
smoke  his  pipe  by  this  wayside  grass  after  aU  that  scurrying  and 


148  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

squabbling.  Fumbling  for  his  matches,  he  felt  the  bulge  of  the 
glove  and  softened  still  more.  Anyhow  he  had  been  victorious 
over  the  vixen,  and  he  was  resting  on  his  laurels,  so  to  speak. 
Now  that  she  realized  he  would  never  recognize  her  as  a  carrier, 
he  could  afford  to  give  her  one  of  the  Canadian  fal-lals  he 
had  bought  at  Moses  &  Son's  for  his  mother,  and  which  now 
reposed  in  the  box  arching  beneath  him.  That  would  make  her 
think  he  had  not  forgotten  her  even  in  Canada,  and  anyhow  it 
would  show  her  he  bore  no  malice  for  the  bite  or  even  for  her 
bark.  Surveying  the  landscape,  he  recognized  that  by  going 
on  a  little  he  would  strike  the  turning  to  the  bridge  and 
"  The  King  of  Prussia,"  where  he  might  possibly  find  a  trap. 
The  hussy  need  never  know  he  had  broken  down.  But  as  he 
sat  there  lazily  smoking  and  evoking  his  boyhood  and  her  part 
therein,  the  best  part  of  an  hour  sped  glamorously,  and  suddenly 
he  saw  red.  Caleb  Flynt,  equally  coatless,  was  hastening  from 
the  Bradmarsh  direction  as  fast  as  his  aged  limbs  could  carry  him. 

"  Hullo,  dad  !  "  he  cried,  startled.     "  Same  old  shirt  !  " 
Caleb  grinned.     "  Keeps  her  colour,  don't  she  ?  " 

"  But  why  didn't  you  come  to  meet  me  ?  "  said  Will,  recalling 
his  grievance. 

"  Oi  did — soon  as  Jinny  come  and  told  us  she'd  passed  you 
carrying  your  chest  and  you  might  want  a  hand.  Is  that  the 
hutch  ?  Dash  my  buttons,  you  must  ha'  growed  up  like  Samson  ! 
Fancy  carryin'  that  all  the  way  from  Chipstone  in  the  strong 
sun  !  " 

Will  did  not  deny  the  feat — the  explanation  would  really  have 
been  too  complicated.  In  his  embarrassment,  he  overlooked  that 
his  father  had  not  really  answered  his  question.  "  And  how's 
mother  ?  "  he  said. 

"  Mother's  in  a  great  old  state.     'Nation  mad  with  Jinny." 

"  Why,  what's  Jinny  done  ?  " 

"  Sow  neglectful.  '  Bein'  as  you  passed  him  by,'  says  mother 
to  she,  '  why  dedn't  you  stop  and  pick  up  the  chest  ? '" 

He  looked  uncomfortable.     "  And  what  did  Jinny  say  ?  " 

"  She  said  she  dedn't  reckonize  the  old  you  when  she  dreft  by, 
and  besides  she  was  singing-like." 

He  winced  at  the  reminder  of  the  song,  but  was  grateful  to  her 
for  telling  so  truthful  a  lie  :  instinctively  he  felt  that  his  folks 
having  accepted  a  woman  carrier  with  such  brainless  acquiescence 
would  fail  to  enter  into  the  fine  shades  of  his  feeling. 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  ,  149 

"  Mother  hadn't  a  right  to  make  a  noise  with  Jinny,"  he  said. 

"  She  only  kitched  of  a  fire  for  a  moment.  'Twas  more  over 
you  than  over  Jinny,  Oi  should  reckon.  Bust  into  tears,  she  did, 
and  when  Oi  said  maybe  as  Jinny  was  mistook  she  nearly  bit 
my  head  off.  '  Too  lazy-boned  to  goo  and  give  a  hand  to  your 
own  buoy-oy,'  says  she.  '  Ain't  he  shifted  for  hisself  nigh  ten 
years  ? '  says  Oi.  '  Can't  you  wait  ten  minutes  more  ?  Oi  count 
he'll  be  here  before  the  New  Jerusalem,'  says  Oi.  That  dedn't 
pacify  her  much,  bein'  a  female.  Cowld-blooded — she  called  me. 
*  There's  feythers,'  says  she,  '  as  'ud  be  trimmed  out  with  colours 
like  Jinny's  hoss — not  leave  it  to  a  gal  as  is  no  relation  to  decorate 
even  her  dog  in  his  honour.'  '  That's  for  May  Day,'  says  Oi. 
'  All  wery  fine,'  says  she.  '  But  May  Day's  over  and  gone  six 
days ' — she's  a  rare  un  for  figgers  is  mother — '  time  enough,'  says 
she,  ^  for  God  to  create  the  world  in.'  '  Maybe  you'd  like  flags 
flourishin'  and  flutterin',  says  Oi,  jocoshus  like,  '  but  Oi  ain't  got 
no  flags  save  my  old  muckinger.'  And  with  that,  bein'  more 
shook  than  I  let  on,  Oi  blowed  my  nose  into  it,  wery  trumpet- 
like, and  that  seemed  to  quieten  her,  for  her  tantarums  be  over 
now,  and  the  onny  noise  she's  makin'  is  the  fryin'  o'  them  little 
old  weal  sausages  for  you." 

"  Good  !  "  cried  the  Prodigal  Son,  his  face  transfigured.  "  She 
remembered  my  passion  for  veal  sausages !  " 

"  '  And  there's  pickled  walnuts  too  1  Put  them  out  likewise,' 
says  Oi,  ^  for  'tis  a  poor  heart  that  never  rejoices.'  " 

"  But  that's  your  passion,  not  mine." 

"  That's  what  mother  said.  '  But  baint  Oi  to  get  no  com- 
pensation ? '  says  Oi.  And  why  dedn't  you  write  to  her  all  these 
years,  Willie  ?  " 

His  face  darkened  again.  "  I'm  no  great  shakes  with  a  quill. 
And  there  wasn't  anything  to  say.  I  did  write  once  to  tell  you 
I  was  safe  across  the  Atlantic  and  was  gone  to  make  my  fortune." 

"  We  dedn't  never  get  no  letter." 

"  No — it  came  back  months  after.  I  forgot  to  put  England 
on  it,  thinking  maybe  Essex  was  enough.  But  it  seems  there's 
a  Mount  Essex  in  the  States,  down  Wyoming  w^ay,  and  the  Yanks 
always  think  everything  is  for  them.  So  I  thought  I'd  best  let 
things  be,  being,  on  the  go  in  those  days." 

Caleb  fully  sympathized  with  the  plea.  *'  And  have  ye  made 
your  fortune.  Will  ?  "  he  inquired  meekly. 

"  That  depends  on  your  idea  of  a  fortune,"  Will  parried.     But 


ISO  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

he  had  a  complacent  consciousness  of  those  bank-notes  behind 
the  glove. 

*'  My  idea  of  a  fortune  be  faith  in  God,"  said  Caleb. 
"  Yes,  yes,  I  know."     The  young  man  got  off  the  box  im- 
patiently. 

Caleb  tugged  at  one  of  its  handles. 

"  liOrd,  that's  lugsome  !  "  he  said,  letting  the  long  heavy  chest 
subside.  "  Ef  you  ain't  come  back  rich,  you've  come  back 
middlin'  powerful.  All  the  way  from  Chipstone  !  "  He  clucked 
his  tongue  admiringly. 

Having  once  left  the  miracle  undenied,  and  feeling  the  situation 
now  altogether  beyond  explanation  to  the  bucoHc  intellect,  Will 
again  silently  acquiesced  in  the  Herculean  imputation  and  took 
the  other  handle.  "  But  why  didn't  you  bring  a  cart  or  a 
truck  ?  "  he  asked  as  they  began  walking  cumbrously  towards 
the  bridge. 

"  Ain't  got  nowt  but  a  wheelbarrow,"  Caleb  explained.  "  Times 
is  changed — Oi  ain't  looker  no  more,  and  there's  two  housen 
now.  Old  Peartree  got  to  have  a  separate  door,  but  'twas  a 
good  bargain  Oi  put  my  cross  to  with  the  son  o'  the  Cornish 
furriner  what  Oi  warked  for  these  thirty-nine  year.  Mother  will 
have  it  she'd  ha'  made  a  cuter  deal,  she  bein'  a  dapster  in  figgers 
and  reckonin'  out  to  a  day  when  the  New  Jerusalem  will  be 
droppin'  down,  but  Oi  don't  howd  with  women  doin'  men's 
business,  bein'  as  your  rib  can't  be  your  head." 

"  I  quite  agree,"  said  Will,  surprised  to  find  such  enlightened 
sentiments  in  his  queer  old  parent.  "  But  tell  me  about  Ben 
and  Isaac  and  the  others." 

^'  They  don't  write  neither.  We  was  lookin'  to  you  to  tell  us 
about  the  others  as  went  furrin.  Ben  should  be  a  barber  in 
America,  and  they  say  as  Christopher's  got  a  woife,  colour  o' 
coffee." 

"  Nonsense,  dad  !  " 

"  Well,  maybe  'twas  Isaac." 

"  No  Flynt  would  marry  a  nigger  woman,"  said  Will  decisively. 

"  Oi'm  right  glad  to  hear  it,"  said  Caleb.  "  For  Oi  count  the 
young  'uns  'ud  come  out  streaky  and  spotty  like  pigeons  or 
cattle,  and  though  they  likely  turn  white  when  they  die,  and 
their  souls  be  white  all  the  time,  Oi  could  never  be  comfortable 
along  o'  finch-backed  gran'childer." 

With  such  discourse  they  beguiled  the  heavy  way,  trudging 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  151 

behind  their  tall  shadows,  till  at  the  gate  of  the  drive  of  Frog 
Farm  they  saw  Martha  peering  eagerly  along  the  avenue  of 
witch-elms.  In  another  instant  Will,  letting  go  his  box-handle, 
was  choked  in  her  hug  and  wetted  by  her  tears. 

"  I  can  smell  those  sausages  right  here,  mother,"  he  said,  with 
a  smile  and  a  half  sob.  "  How  do  ye  howd  r  "  And  he  empha- 
sized the  homely  old  idiom  by  patting  her  wrinkled  cheek.  She 
caught  his  hand  in  hers,  and  he  was  touched  by  the  thin  worn 
wedding-ring  on  the  gnarled  and  freckled  hand.  His  eyes  roved 
round.  "  But  surely  this  ain't  the  house  I  was  born  in.  Why, 
that  was  a  giant's  castle." 

Caleb  looked  a  bit  uneasy  :  "  You're  sure  this  be  Will  ?  "  he 
asked  Martha  in  one  of  his  thundrous  whispers. 

"  Why,  I'd  know  him  in  a  hundred." 

"  Well,  there's  onny  nine  or  ten."     And  he  laughed  gleefully. 

"  Do  be  easv,  Caleb.  You're  getting  as  unrestful  as  Bun- 
dock." 

"  I'm  Will  right  enough,"  Will  intervened.  "  Only  everything 
seems  to  have  got  so  small.  Come  along,  dad."  He  took  up 
his  side  of  the  box. 

"  Gracious  goodness  !  "  cried  Martha,  perceiving  it  at  last. 
"  My  poor  Will !  Lugging  that  from  Chipstone  !  Why  didn't 
you  call  to  Jinny  to  stop  and  take  it  ?  " 

*'  How  was  I  to  know  that  that  was  Jinny's  cart  dashing  by  I  " 
he  said,  moving  forward  quickly.  "  I  suppose  you  didn't  ask 
her  to  stay  for  the  sausages  ?  "  he  added  lightly. 

"  I  couldn't  ask  her,  dearie,"  said  Martha.  "  She  was  terrible 
late,  she  said,  and  I  know  how  crotched  her  wicked  old  grand- 
father gets  at  feeding-time." 

"  How  big  she's  grown  !  "  he  observed  carelessly. 

"  Big  !  "  They  both  repeated  the  word,  but  from  a  different 
surprise. 

"  You  said  you  didn't  see  her,"  said  Martha  sharply. 

"  I  saw  a  big  young  woman  flying  by  in  the  cart — I  didn't  know 
then  it  was  Jinny." 

"  But  you  just  said  everything's  growed  so  little,"  chuckled 
Caleb. 

"  So  it  has — all  except  Jinny." 

"  And  she  isn't  so  very  big,"  said  Martha,  "  rather  undersized, 
some  folks  would  say." 

"  Well,  I'm  not  so  oversized  myself,"  said  Will. 


152  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Will's  seen  her  toplofty  over  Methusalem/'  explained  Caleb. 
"  Wait  till  he  sees  her  on  her  pegs." 

"  But  I  did  see  her  on  her  pegs,"  said  Will,  "  at  '  The  Black 
Sheep  ' 1  " 

"  Then  why  did  you  goo  and  carry  that  little  old  box  ?  " 
inquired  Caleb. 

**  She  wasn't  in  the  cart  then — ^how  was  I  to  guess  she  was  the 
Carrier  ?  "  he  answered  crossly. 

"  But  you  could  ha'  ast  for  the  Bradmarsh  carrier." 

"  The  coach  was  late,"  he  snapped. 

"  But  Jinny  hadn't  started  yet,"  persisted  Caleb.  "  Bein'  as 
you  seen  her  there." 

"  Legends,  my  boy,  legends."  Tony  Flip's  euphemism  for  lies 
rang  in  Will's  brain.  But  legends,  he  was  finding,  are  not  easy 
to  sustain.  One  lie  breeds  many,  and  he  was  sorry  now  he  had 
allowed  himself  to  be  made  a  champion  weight-lifter.  "  I 
thought  being  so  late  'twas  no  use  asking  for  the  Carrier— 'twas 
you  I  expected,"  he  said,  turning  the  war  back  into  the  enemy's 
country. 

But  they  had  now  lumbered  up  with  the  box  to  the  twin 
doors,  and  the  task  of  dumping  down  the  subject  of  discussion 
in  a  convenient  place  stayed  the  cross-examination. 

The  feast  for  the  Prodigal  Son  had  been  laid  in  the  parlour, 
and  the  scent  of  the  fried  sausages  came  appetizingly  on  the 
evening  air,  more  poetic  than  any  of  Nature's  competing  odours. 

"  Why,  there's  my  letter  !"  cried  W^ill  at  the  parlour  door, 
beholding  it  on  the  mantelpiece.  "  You  might  have  let  me  know 
vou  couldn't  meet  me." 

He  went  in  and  took  it  down.  "  Not  opened  ?  "  he  cried 
crossly,  the  muggy  atmosphere  of  the  sealed  chamber  adding  to 
his  irritation.  "  And  I  told  you  exactly  the  day  and  hour  I  was 
coming  !  " 

"  We  haven't  had  time  to  get  it  read  yet,  dearie,"  said  Martha 
mildly.  "  I  was  going  to  take  it  to  the  dressmaker,  but  Saturdays 
I'm  so  busy  and  Sunday  was  Sunday,  and  yesterday  I  felt  as  if 
my  ribs  were  grating  together,  and  to-day  was  too  hot." 

"  Well,  I  shan't  write  again  in  a  hurry,"  he  said  peevishly,  and 
was  about  to  tear  the  letter  in  twain.  But  Martha  snatched  it 
from  him  with  a  cry  and  sHpped  it  into  her  bosom. 

"  Sit  down.  Will,"  she  pleaded.     "  Your  sausages  are  spoiling." 

But  the  Prodigal  Son  would  not  batten  at  once  upon  the  fatted 


WILL  ON  HIS  WAY  153 

calf.  He  felt  too  dusty,  he  said,  and  then,  imperiously  pushing 
at  the  diamond-paned  casement  and  realizing  with  disgust  it 
would  not  open,  vanished  in  search  of  soap. 

"  He  can't  be  well,"  whimpered  Martha. 

"  Don't  worrit,  dear  heart,"  Caleb  consoled  her.  "  Oi  count 
even  Samson  wanted  a  wash  arter  he'd  lugged  that  little  old 
gate  up  the  hill  from  Gazy." 


CHAPTER  V 

WILL  AT  HOME 

Is  not  this  the  merry  month  of  May^ 
When  love-lads  masken  in  fresh  array  ? 
How  falls  ity  then,  we  no  merrier  he^n. 
Like  as  others,  girt  in  gaudy  green  ? 

Spenser,  "  The  Shepheards  Calendar." 


Time  hung  heavy  on  Will's  hands  the  first  few  days  of  his  return, 
as  heavy  as  the  meals  heaped  before  him  by  the  adoring  Martha. 
There  was  as  much  for  "  bever  "  as  for  breakfast,  yet  quantity 
did  not  suffice  him.  He  became  almost  as  finnicking  and 
fractious  as  Cousin  Caroline,  not  content,  for  example,  to  strain 
the  pond-water  through  muslin  for  the  larger  insects,  but  insisting 
on  its  being  boiled :  indeed  hinting  preposterously  that  the 
mortality  among  his  unknown  brothers  and  sisters  might  have 
been  connected  with  potations  on  which  Caleb  and  Martha  had 
patently  flourished.  He  held  views  on  the  house-refuse,  ignoring 
Caleb's  plea  that  "  the  best  drain  be  a  pig,"  and  by  making 
hinges  the  very  first  evening  for  the  lower  windows  to  open  by,  he 
had  raised  such  a  draught  in  the  house  that  it  was  all  they  could 
do  to  keep  their  bedroom  and  their  kitchen  air-tight,  and  even 
Martha  was  glad  when  on  the  Wednesday  afternoon  he  went 
off  to  get  some  fishing  in  the  Brad,  and  the  windows  could 
all  be  closed  up  again. 

But  the  few  dace  and  bull-heads  that  rewarded  his  rod  left  too 
many  intervals  for  reflection,  and  in  the  unsettlement  of  his 
thoughts,  before  settling  down  to  a  judicious  expenditure  of  his 
ninety  pounds,  he  felt  he  needed  more  deadening  exertion.  He 
tried  poHng  against  the  stream  to  that  ancient  faery  island — 
somebody's  half-decked  shooting  punt  was  doing  no  good  rusting 
on  the  bank  in  the  off-season,  he  thought — but  the  process  soon 


WILL  AT  HOME  155 

became  automatic  and  his  mind  was  still  restless,  while  after  the 
islands  of  the  St.  Lawrence  this  enchanted  playground  of  his 
youth  seemed  tame  and  its  prettiness  trivial. 

He  fed  his  fancy  on  a  salt-water  expedition  for  the  Thursday : 
recalled  the  great  catches  of  flat-fish  he  and  his  brothers  had 
made,  the  sport  to  be  got  out  of  the  voracious  if  inedible  "  bull- 
rout,"  but  it  would  be  a  very  long  walk,  and  what  if  when  one 
arrived  the  tide  should  be  too  low  ?     So  he  walked  inland  around 
Bradmarsh  Common.     But  though  it  was,  he  told  himself,  the 
"  old  haunts  "  that  he  went  out  for  to  see,  he  omitted  to  revisit 
that  venerable  landmark.  Gaffer  Quarles.     Conscience  adjured 
him  he  ought  to  look  up  the  old  carrier,  whether  for  respect  or 
reproof — and  he  actually  did  hover  around  Blackwater  Hall — • 
but  pride  forbade  his  entering,  lest  he  stumble  upon  the  new 
Carrier.     The  Hall  appeared  even  more  dwindled  to  him  than 
Frog  Farm  as  he  stood  surlily  surveying  it ;   even  the  Common — 
after  the  Canadian  prairie — seemed  no  longer  to  roll  towards  the 
blue  infinities.     He  had  a  strong  impulse  to  burst  in  on  that 
careless  old  Daniel  and  give  him  a  piece  of  his  mind,  even  at  the 
risk  of  meeting  his  gadabout  granddaughter  ;    but  the  bleating 
of  the  goats  sounded  forbidding,  and  as  he  was  hesitating  he 
found  himself  under  the  gaze  of  another  gaffer,  the  crown  of 
whose  battered  beaver  tied  on  to  its  brim  with  coloured  strings 
gave  him  a  festal  grotesquerie.     Will  remembered  this  ancient, 
though  despite  his  gay  headgear  he  now  seemed   inexpressibly 
grimy  in  his  patched  corduroys,  his  two  ragged  coats,  and  the 
dirty   towel   wound   round   his   throat.     It   was    the   Quarles's 
nearest  neighbour,  "  Uncle  "  Lilliwhyte,  who  lived  in  a  cottage 
also  on  the  Common ;  trading  in  cress,  cherries,  and  mushrooms, 
driving  home  obstreperous  cows  and  doing  other  odd  jobs.     This 
worthy  was  now  exercising  his  equal  right  of  gathering  sticks  on 
the  Common,  and  the  sordid  association  seemed  to  reduce  Jinny 
to  the  same  shrunken  proportions  as  her  cottage. 
"  Buy  a  nadder,  sir  ?  " 

"  Sir  !  "  Yes,  after  all,  his  father  had  been  a  "  looker,"  not 
a  mere  labourer,  he  himself  had  a  waistcoat  lined  with  bank-notes 
and  cut  by  Moses  &  Son,  why  should  he  expect  a  sense  of 
dignity  from  a  girl  of  so  lowly  a  status  ?  Let  her  earn  her 
livelihood  as  she  wished — it  was  not  his  affair,  except  in  so  far 
as  she  should  have  none  of  his  custom.  A  cock  crew  lustily,  and 
it  subtly  heartened  him  up.     Yes,  he  would  go  in  now,  give  her 


1S6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

back  her  glove,  professing  to  have  just  picked  it  up,  and  wash 
his  hands  of  her  for  ever. 

"  No,  thank  you,  uncle,"  he  said,  with  an  irrelevant  memory  of 
the  ancient's  blind  mother,  "  what  should  I  do  with  an  adder  ?  " 

"  But  that's  a  real  loive  nadder,  just  kitched,  sir."  He 
cautiously  displayed  its  hissing  head  and  darting  tongue. 
"  There's  many  a  slowworm  killed  for  a  woiper,  pore  things, 
Onny  fowrpence,  sir  !  " 

"  Well,  here's  sixpence,"  said  Will  graciously.  "  No,  no,"  he 
explained  hastily,  as  the  ancient  began  handing  over  the  wriggling 
reptile.  "  Kill  the  beggar."  And  he  hurried  homewards.  On 
second  thoughts — inspired  perhaps  by  some  dim  impression  of  a 
female  figure  flitting  among  the  clothes-lines  behind  the  Hall — 
he  would  not  risk  an  encounter  with  Jinny,  but  make  a  special 
call  upon  poor,  lonely  old  Daniel  on  the  morrow.  Jinny  would 
then  be  out  on  her  rounds.'  And  if  he  took  care  to  go  at  about 
the  hour  she  was  due  at  Frog  Farm,  he  could  avoid  her  at 
both  places.  Yes,  that  were  tactics  worthy  of  a  man  of  the 
world. 

Casual  conversation  with  his  elders  reminded  him,  however, 
that  Jinny  was  not  expected  that  Friday.  She  had  already  left 
the  parcel  of  groceries  on  the  Tuesday.  He  was  thus  safe  from 
her  for  eight  days— he  had  only  to  remain  at  home.  But  the 
discovery  that  the  whole  of  Friday  was  free  from  any  possibility 
of  her  appearance  at  Frog  Farm,  and  that  Blackwater  Hall  was 
equally  immune  from  her  presence,  seemed  to  remove  the  zest 
of  his  diplomacy.  Neighbour  Quarles  remained  un visited,  his 
solitude  unmitigated,  and  Will  wandered  aimlessly  on  the  high 
road  between  Bradmarsh  and  Chipstone. 

The  year  was  at  its  most  beautiful  moment.  The  hedges  were 
white  with  hawthorn,  and  the  fresh  young  leaves  on  the 
trees  gave  an  exquisite  sense  of  greenness  without  blurring  the 
structural  grace  of  the  branches,  while  the  unspoiled  cadence 
of  the  cuckoo's  cry  came  magically  over  the  sunny  meadows. 
But  Will  could  only  swish  viciouslv  with  his  stick  at  the  hedges 
and  litter  the  lanes  with  ruined  blossom. 

It  was  with  no  little  surprise  that,  as  he  and  his  elders  sat  at 
high  tea  on  this  same  evening,  they  heard  the  windings  of  Jinny's 
horn.     The  three  sprang  up  :   then  Will  sat  down  again. 

"  Ain't  you  comin'  out  to  see  Jinny  ?  "  asked  Caleb. 

"  Let  the  boy  drink  his  tea,"  said  Martha. 


WILL  AT  HOME  157 

"  But  youTain't  never  spoke  to  her  yet,"  persisted  Caleb. 
"  And  you  used  to  give  her  eggs." 

"  Let  the  boy  eat  his  eggs  himself,"  said  Martha  sternly. 

"  Oi  dedn't  mean  they  eggs,"  laughed  Caleb. 

"  Do  go  and  see  what  Jinny  can  want,"  Martha  commanded  him. 
'•  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  if  it  is  eggs — now  that  Mr.  Flippance 
has  opened  his  show  he'll  be  wanting  them  regularly." 

"  Whatever  for  ?  "  asked  Will. 

"  He  sucks  'em  raw,  like  weasels,  him  and  his  darter,"  explained 
Caleb.  "  They  should  say  it's  good  for  the  woice,  and  by  all 
accounts  showmen  fares  to  have  a  mort  o'  pieces  to  speak." 

"  But  why  doesn't  Jinny   sell  him  her  own  eggs  ?  "  asked 

wm. 

"  How  do  you  know  she  has  them  ?  "  asked  Martha  quickly. 

*'  Hasn't  she  ?  "  he  said  lightly,  reddening  like  the  comb  of 
the  cock  he  had  heard  crowing. 

"  Not  enough.  That  old  sinner  eats  her  out  of  house  and 
home." 

"  Mr.  Flippance  ?  "  murmured  Will. 

"  No,  no.     Her  grandfather.     Why  don't  you  go,  Caleb  ?  " 

Will  sat  on  stolidly,  helping  himself  to  more  tea  and  pouring 
the  milk  into  the  slop-basin.  Presently  Caleb  returned,  announc- 
ing that  Jinny  had  brought  something  for  Will — she  could  only 
legally  deliver  it  to  Mr.  Flynt,  junior,  she  said. 

Will  turned  redder  than  at  the  egg-talk.  "  But  I  never 
ordered  anything,"  he  said. 

"  You  can't  prewent  folks  sendin'  you  presents,  same  as 
they're  foolish  enough,"  Caleb  reminded  hijn. 

A  fantastic  fear  that  the  blue-eyed  girl  of  the  train  was  dis- 
charging some  proof  of  devotion  at  him  made  him  drum  nervously 
with  his  teaspoon.  "  But  who  knows  I'm  back  home  ?  "  he 
answered  Caleb. 

Through  the  open  house-door  came  the  gay  strains  of  a  fresh 
young  voice  :   * 

"  But  still  he^d  singfol  cle  rol  iddle  ol  !  " 

"  Don't  she  sing  pritty  ?  "  sighed  Caleb. 

"  I'd  sooner  hear  her  singing  about  Zion,"  said  Martha.  "  She's 
rather  flighty,  to  my  thinking." 

"  That's  the  first  time  Oi  heard  ye  say  a  word  agen  Jinny," 
said  Caleb,  ''*  leastways  behind  her  back." 


158  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Will,  tingling  between  the  two  tortures — the  song  without  and 
the  table-talk  within — sprang  up  brusquely.  "  Drat  the  girl — 
my  tea'll  get  cold.     Sit  down,  dad,  I'll  see  what  she's  brought." 


II 

Jinny  sat  stiffly  on  her  seat,  Nip  clasped  in  her  arms.  The 
singing  had  ceased.  Despite  himself  Will  felt  an  odd  pleasure  in 
the  sight  of  the  trim  figure  so  competently  poised  above  Methu- 
salem,  and  he  was  touched  to  note  Nip's  tail  agitating  itself 
amicably  at  the  sight  of  him. 

"  Good  evening,"  she  said  politely.  "  I  am  glad  to  see  it  has 
not  developed." 

"  What  hasn't  developed  ?  " 

"  Your  hydrophobia.  And  I  am  keeping  the  dog  tight,  you 
notice." 

He  winced.     "  Oh,  I'm  not  afraid  of  him." 

"  But  I  am — he's  already  bitten  you  once  :  get  the  cages, 
please,  while  I  hold  him." 

"  The  cages  ?  "  He  had  a  confused  idea  that  Nip  was  to  be 
caged,  was  dangerous  after  all. 

"  They're  near  the  tail-board.     Nothing  to  pay." 

He  went  behind  the  cart,  wondering,  semi-incredulous  ;  did 
indeed  perceive  a  couple  of  cages  in  the  dusk,  and  reaching  for 
one,  drew  back  his  hand  in  a  hurry  from  some  darting,  snapping, 
creamy,  pink-eyed  yellowness. 

"  Oh  !  "  he  cried  involuntarily. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?     Oh,  I  had  forgotten  they  bite  too." 

"  What  is  this  practical  joke  ?  "  he  cried  angrily. 

"  Eh  r  "  said  Jinny.  "  Didn't  you  order  a  pair  of  ferrets  to 
be  sent  by  the  Carrier  ?  " 

His  eyes  grew  wide.  "  I  beg  your  pardon — I'd  quite  for- 
gotten." 

"  I  thought  Deacon  Mawhood  wasn't  a  likely  jaker.  Polecats, 
he  said.  Have  you  got  the  cages  ?  "  she  asked,  not  looking 
back. 

"  I'm — I'm  getting  them,"  he  stammered,  and  began  cautiously 
haling  them  towards  him. 

"  The  Deacon  asked  me  to  say  the  hob  and  the  jill  must  be 
kept  apart." 

"  I  know,"  he  grunted,  almost  as  shocked  as  over  her  mention 


WILL  AT  HOME  159 

of  Maria's  litter.  The  impudicity  of  her  calling  was  again  borne 
in  on  him. 

"  Anything  else  ?  "  burst  from  him  sardonically. 

"  No — except  there's  no  need  to  cope  them.  I  don't  know 
what  coping  is." 

"  It's  what  you  want,"  he  said  brutally.     "  Muzzling." 

"  Afraid  of  my  bite,  too  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  and  turning  towards 
the  interior  shelf  that  held  the  smaller  parcels,  she  began  to  sing 
softly  to  herself  : 

^'A  dashing  young  lad  from  Buckingham.^^ 

He  had  been  expecting  "  Canada  "  at  the  end,  and  felt  some- 
how disappointed  at  its  absence.  "  But  when  I  gave  the  order," 
he  rejoined  notwithstanding,  "  I  didn't  know  that  the  Bradmarsh 
Carrier  was  a  girl." 

"That  didn't  prevent  you  using  her  when  you  did  know,"  she 
said  quietly. 

"  When  have  I  used  her  ?  "  he  cried  hotly. 

"  Well,  what  about  this  ?  "  She  produced  from  the  shelf  in 
the  cart  a  long  parcel  half  enclosed  by  a  string  in  broken,  dirty 
paper,  within  v/hich  showed  a  layer  of  grimy  straw. 

"  But  what  is  it  ?  " 

"  That's  not  my  business."     She  tendered  it  downwards. 

"  I  never  ordered  this." 

"  Hadn't  you  better  open  it  ?  "  she  asked  with  a  twinkle.  He 
dumped  down  the  cages  violently,  to  the  alarm  of  the  ferrets,  and 
tore  it  open,  only  to  shudder  back  before  the  clammy-looking 
coils. 

"  An  adder  as  well  ?  "  said  Jinny.  "  You  going  to  open  a 
menagerie  ?  " 

"  It's  dead,"  he  said. 

"  Did  you  want  a  live  one  ?  " 

"  I  didn't  want  one  at  all — I  never  ordered  it." 

"  Why,  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  told  me  he  sold  it  to  you  for  fourpence 
and  you  gave  him  twopence  extra  to  kill  it." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon — he  misunderstood."  It  was  his  second 
apology.     "  But  what  a  dirty  way  to  deliver  it." 

"  Did  you  expect  me  to  nurse  a  viper  in  my  bosom  ?  " 

Again  this  indelicate  speech,  hardly  atoned  for  by  its  wit. 
''  The  old  ragamuffin  !  "  he  muttered  furiously.  "How  did  the 
idiot  know  it  was  me  ?  " 


i6o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Fellow-feeling,  I  suppose,"  said  Jinny. 

"  Now  you're  saucy  again.   You  must  have  told  him  it  was  me." 

"  Right  for  once.  Honest  uncle  was  upset  at  your  forgetting 
to  tell  him  where  to  send  your  purchase.  I  was  milking  my 
goats  and  saw  you  hanging  about." 

Again  he  flushed  uneasily.  "  And  how  much  do  I  owe  you  ?  " 
he  asked  hurriedly. 

"  Twopence  for  the  viper,  being  only  a  short  w^ay.  The 
Deacon  says  he  prefers  to  pay  the  freightage  on  the  ferrets,  and 
to  collect  it  from  vou  himself." 

He  put  down  the  straw-entangled  snake  on  top  of  one  of  the 
cages,  and  pulled  out  a  coin.  "  Have  you  got  change  for 
sixpence  ?  " 

"  Not  unless  I  loose  Nip."  She  fumbled  with  one  hand  in  her 
pocket. 

He  glowered.     "  Oh,  next  time  will  do,"  he  said  angrily. 

"  Oh,  then,  there  is  to  be  a  next  time  !  " 

"  Not  so  far  as  I  am  concerned." 

"  Sure  you  don't  want  any  more  wild  animals  ?  " 

"  No,"  he  shouted, 

"  Don't  be  so  fierce.  The  drumstick  is  found,  you  will  be  glad 
to  hear." 

He  grunted. 

"  And  the  show  is  doing  big  business,  Mr.  Flippance  tells  me. 
He  was  so  set  up  he  gave  me  a  pair  of  new  gloves." 

"  That  old  braggart  !  What  business  had  he  to  give  you 
gloves  ?  " 

"  Didn't  I  lose  one  through  his  drumstick  ?  " 

"  But  then  'tis  me  ought  to  pay  for  them,"  he  protested. 

"  You  ?     What  nonsense  !     Why  ?  " 

"  It  was  on  my  account  you  lost  the  glove — through  trying  to 
get  a  bite." 

She  smiled.     ''  You  talk  as  if  I  were  an  angler." 

"  I  wish  you  were  !     Anything  but  a  carrier." 

"  Don't  say  that.  Would  you  like  me  to  buy  another  pair  of 
gloves — on  your  account  ?  " 

"  If  you  would  !  "  he  said  eagerly. 

"  Thank  you  ! 

But  still  he^d  singfol  de  rol  iddle  oL 
What  size  do  you  take  ?  " 


WILL  AT  HOME  i6i 

"  Stow  that  fol-de-riddling — you  know  I  don't  mean  gloves 
for  meP 

"  Are  you  taking  back  the  ord^er  ?  "  she  said,  with  feigned 
disappointment. 

"  I  never  gave  you  an  order  !  "  he  said,  goaded.  "  I'd  cut  my 
tongue  out  sooner." 

"  Keep  your  tongue  between  your  teeth.  You'll  want  it  to 
give  me  an  order  with  before  you're  a  week  older." 

"  Never  !  I'd  as  soon  shoe  a  horse  with  a  hairpin."  He 
snatched  up  his  cages  decisively,  one  in  each  hand,  and  the 
adder  rolled  on  to  the  ground,  bursting  its  strawy  cerements. 

The  girl's  grey  eyes  flashed  steel-like.  "  And  can't  I  drive  as 
well  as  Gran'fer  ?  And  don't  I  know  the  roads  ?  "  And  she 
uplifted  her  horn  from  her  girdle  and  blew  a  resounding  blast  of 
defiance.  It  set  all  the  cocks  crowing  behind  the  house  and 
brought  Caleb  bustling  from  within  it. 

"  Did  you  summon  me,  Jinny  ?  "  he  asked.  "  Gracious,  Will, 
whatever  you  got  there  ?  "  His  eyes  expanded  to  see  the 
sinuous  animals  swirling  fiercely  against  their  wires  ;  in  coming 
nearer  to  peer  at  them,  he  stumbled  over  the  snake  and  uttered 
a  cry. 

"  It's  all  right,"  caUed  Jinnv.     "  It's  dead." 

"  You  killed  it,  Willie  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  With  a  drumstick,"  said  Jinny  gravely. 

"  Fiddlesticks,  father  !  "  said  Will  angrily. 

"  Oi  don't  care  what  sort  o'  stick  you  killed  that  with,"  said 
Caleb,  "  so  long  as  it's  a  dead  corpse.  But  do  ye  come  in  now — 
mother's  grousin'  about  the  tea  gittin'  cold." 

"  I  like  cold  tea.  Go  in,  father.  I'm  just  coming."  He 
harked  back  to  her  blast  of  rebellion.  "  You  may  be  able  to 
drive,  and  you  may  know  the  roads.  But  can't  you  see  how 
unnatural  it  is,  you  perched  up  there  and  blowing  a  horn  like 
Dick  Burrage  of  the  County  Flyer  ?  " 

"  And  do  I  blow  it  as  fine  as  he  ?  "  she  asked  eagerly. 

"  Anybody  can  blow  a  horn,"  he  answered  curtly. 

"  Can  they  now  ?  "  She  was  piqued  again.  "  I'd  like  to  see 
anybody  do  it.     Why,  Gran'fer  can't." 

"  Gran'fer  hasn't  got  much  breath  left.  I'm  not  talking  of 
men  in  their  eighties." 

"  He  is  in  his  nineties,"  she  corrected. 

"  Exactly.     I  meant  anybody  with  proper  lungs." 

L 


i62  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Can  you  blow  it  ?  " 

"  Why  shouldn't  I  be  able  to  blow  it  ?  " 

"  All  right !  Blow  it  !  "  said  Jinny  gravely.  She  unslung  it 
with  one  arm  and  held  it  down.  He  gazed  at  it,  taken  aback, 
sandwiched  between  his  cages. 

"  It's  no  good  opening  your  mouth,"  she  said.  "  I'm  not 
going  to  stick  it  in.  You'll  have  to  put  down  those  horrible 
beasts  and  do  that  yourself.  Why  don't  they  keep  still  ?  They 
make  my  head  ache." 

He  moved  to  the  back  of  the  house  to  place  the  ferrets  out  of 
the  way,  kicking  the  poor  adder  before  him — it  was  a  needed 
relief  to  his  feelings.  Returning,  thus  purged,  he  took  the 
proffered  horn — it  was  not  a  professional  coach-horn  or  post-horn, 
but  just  the  little  instrument  of  a  master  of  foxhounds  curling 
into  a  circle  above — and  with  but  scant  misgiving  put  it  to  his 
mouth,  and  blew.  But  the  silence  remained  unbroken.  He 
puffed  on  and  on  with  solemn  pertinacity.  Not  a  sound  issued. 
His  cheeks  swelled  to  bursting-point,  and  grew  redder  and 
redder  with  shame  and  vexation.     But  silence  still  reigned. 

"  You  mustn't  put  it  inside  your  lips,"  corrected  Jinny. 
"  Think  you're  tum-tumming  into  a  comb." 

He  readjusted  it  sullenly,  but  the  music  within  was  still 
coy. 

''  Slacken  your  lip,"  she  advised.  "  Try  to  splutter  br-r-r-rr 
into  it." 

But  whatever  he  spluttered  into  it,  nothing  came  out. 

"  I  never  realized  it  was  quite  so  difficult,  even  the  lipping," 
said  Jinny  simply.  "  Of  course  I  didn't  expect  you  to  do  the 
double  or  treble  tonguing  at  once." 

"  What  do  you  mean,  tonguing  ?  "  he  inquired  morosely. 

"  Dividing  the  notes.     Say  '  Tucker,  Tucker,  Tucker  '  into  it." 

"  But  it's  blowing,  not  saying,"  said  Will  obstinately. 

But  secretly  he  modified  his  methods,  and  at  last  a  ghostly 
plangency  or  a  staccato  squeak  began  to  reward  his  apoplectic 
agonizings,  and  the  still  prisoned  Nip,  who  had  been  yawning  in 
utter  boredom,  now  accompanied  the  music  with  a  critical  and 
lugubrious  howling. 

Upon  this  spectacle  and  situation  reissued  the  guileless  Caleb, 
and  had  the  Crystal  City  itself  come  down  upon  earth,  his  eyes 
could  scarcely  have  orbed  themselves  more  spaciously. 

"  He  didrCt  summon  you,"  observed  the  merciless  Jinny. 


WILL  AT  HOME  163 

"  Go  away,  father  !  What  are  you  staring  at  ?  "  yapped  the 
tortured  young  man. 

"  You  do  be  a  fine  musicianer  !  "  And  Caleb  grinned.  "  But 
do  ye  don't  play  now — mother's  git  tin'  into  her  tantarums  over 
your  tea." 

"  The  instrument  must  be  out  of  order,"  said  Will,  handing  it 
up  crossly  to  Jinny.  Remorselessly  she  drew  from  it  a  clarion  call 
that  made  the  welkin  ring  and  the  poultry-yard  respond  in  kind. 

"  How  the  cocks  crow  !  "  she  observed  artlessly. 

"  Thinks  because  she  blows  a  horn  she's  a  devil  of  a  fellow," 
Will  remarked  witheringly  to  his  receding  father.  "  Say,  Jinny, 
why  don't  you  wear  the  breeches  ?  " 

"  Like  those  Bloomerites  you  told  me  of  ?  I  will,"  she 
responded  sweetly,  "  if  you  think  it  more  becoming." 

"  Me  !     You  don't  suppose  /  notice  what  you  wear." 

"  Then  how  do  you  know  I'm  not  wearing  'em  now^  ?  " 

"  You  have  me  there  !  "  And  he  smiled  despite  himself.  The 
smile  lit  up  the  face  under  the  aureole  of  red  hair — it  seemed  to 
Jinny  a  sudden  glimpse,  through  a  rift  of  Time,  of  the  boy  she 
had  known.  "  All  the  same,"  he  protested,  "  if  I  had  a  horn,  I 
could  learn  it  in  an  hour." 

'''  Well,  get  one,"  said  Jinny. 

"  Where  can  I  get  one  ?  "  he  retorted  fretfully. 

"  Dearie  !     Your  tea !  "     It  was  Martha  herself  now. 

"  Oh,  I'd  get  you  one,"  said  Jinny  carelessly,  "  but  I'll  wager 
you  won't  blow  it  properly  in  a  week,  much  less  an  hour  !  " 

"  A  week  !     What  nonsense  !     In  a  moment." 

"  In  a  moment  ?  " 

"  I  was  speaking  to  mother.     What'll  you  wager  ?  " 

"  A  pair  of  gloves,"  said  Jinnv. 

"  Done  !  "  said  Will. 

She  clucked  to  Methusalem.  "  Good-bye,"  she  called  to  the 
couple  as  the  cart  moved  oflE.  "  I'll  deliver  your  order  next 
Friday,  Will — without  fail." 

"  Dearie,  whatever  are  you  running  after  her  for  ? "  cried 
Martha. 

He  came  back  sheepishly  :   "  I  thought  the  gate  wasn't  open." 

From  the  Bradmarsh  road  the  sound  of  the  "  fol-de-rol " 
refrain  came  sweetly  on  the  quiet  air. 

"  I  wish  she  would  sing  of  Zion,"  repeated  Martha  wistfully. 


i64  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

III 

The  pair  of  polecat  ferrets — creamy  white  albinos,  pink  of  eye 
and  black  of  belly—-- hung  in  the  cages  on  the  back  wall  of  the 
farmhouse,  with  a  spare  cage  beside  them  as  a  retiring-place 
when  a  hutch  was  turned  out.  But  only  once — on  the  Saturday 
in  the  first  ardour  of  possession — had  Will  taken  them  out 
a-hunting :  on  which  occasion  they  had  refused  to  rat  or  rabbit. 
Indeed  their  leaps  and  gambols  persuaded  Will  that  they  pursued 
— as  he  remembered  the  Deacon  once  maintaining  sympathetically 
about  rats — their  "  private  sports."  Why  indeed  should  sensible 
creatures,  comfortably  fed  on  chicken-head  and  blackbirds,  and 
provided  with  straw  to  cocoon  themselves  against  cold,  go 
squeezing  into  holes  or  drains  ?  Restored  to  captivity,  these 
faineant  ferrets  spent  most  of  their  day  in  squirming  with 
desperate  restlessness  from  one  end  of  the  cage  to  the  other  and 
perking  their  quivering  noses  and  little  black  claws  through  the 
wires.  And  their  master's  own  plight  was  much  the  same,  for 
after  the  prairie.  Frog  Farm  was  only  a  hutch  to  him  :  his 
father,  too,  being  so  unexpectedly  on  the  shelf,  there  was  nothing 
that  really  needed  him,  nor  was  there  any  land  for  sale  in  the 
vicinity  on  which  he  might  commence  operations.  Like  his 
ferrets,  if  with  a  larger  run,  he  swayed  restlessly  to  and  fro  ; 
from  farm  to  river,  from  river  to  Common,  from  Common  to 
Steeples  Wood,  from  Steeples  Wood  to  Frog  Farm. 

When  he  was  not  thus  oscillating  on  the  landscape,  he  was 
sweating  in  intellectual  indecision  in  the  parlour  :  trying  to  write 
a  little  note  to  Jinny  to  inform  her  that  she  was  to  come  to  Frog 
Farm  no  more,  inasmuch  as  he  intended  to  go  into  Chipstone 
himself  once  or  twice  a  fortnight,  and  could  easily  bring  home 
whatever  was  necessary.  He  had  thought  that  when  he  had 
found  a  feather  dropped  by  a  green  goose,  cut  his  quill,  concocted 
an  ink  out  of  soot  and  water,  and  discovered  a  piece  of  white 
paper  wrapped  round  his  bank-notes,  that  his  difficulties  were 
over.  But  the  worst  now  remained,  for  he  could  not  satisfy 
himself  as  to  the  phraseology  of  this  note,  being,  as  he  had  truly 
pleaded,  no  great  shakes  at  letter-writing.  Such  glibness  as  he 
could  muster  in  conversation  was  paralysed  in  fact  by  a  pen. 
There  w^as  not  even  one  of  those  word-books  he  had  seen  scholarly 
people  use  to  ensure  the  spelling,  and  one  must  not  unnecessarily 
afford  material  to  a  minx  who — having  obviously  to  do  with  bills 


WILL  AT  HOME  165 

and  accounts — might  conceivably  be  literate.  He  had  a  vague 
remembrance  of  her  reading  texts  quite  easily  at  the  Sunday- 
school,  young  as  she  was.  Even  if  she  could  spell  no  better 
than  he,  she  might  possess  one  of  these  spelling-protectors. 

The  only  book  at  Frog  Farm  being  his  mother's  Bible,  he  tried 
to  secure  accuracy  by  limiting  himself  to  its  words.  But  its 
vocabulary  seemed  strangely  lacking.  He  had  decided,  for 
example,  to  begin  with  "  Maddam."  One  could  not  call  such  a 
stranger  as  the  new  Jinny  "  Dear  Miss,"  he  thought,  and  "  Miss  " 
alone  sounded  thin  and  abrupt.  No,  "  Maddam "  was  the 
mouth-filling  resonance  necessary  :  it  struck  a  note  of  massive 
dignity.  But  did  it  really  have  two  "  d's "  ?  And  to  his 
amazement  and  anguish  neither  "  Maddam  "  nor  "  Madam  " 
was  to  be  discovered  from  Genesis  to  Revelation.  Adam,  the 
nearest  analogue,  who  came  in  his  reference  volume  with  welcome 
promptitude,  even  precipitateness,  had,  he  found,  only  one 
"  d,"  but  was  he  a  sure  guide  to  the  orthography  of  the  creature 
formed  out  of  his  spare  rib  ?  This  and  the  many  other  curious 
and  amazing  passages  that  beguiled  him  on  his  route — presented 
thus  to  a  fresh  and  world-experienced  eye — ran  away  with  so 
much  time  that  Martha  would  be  summoning  him  to  the  next  of 
his  many  meals  before  he  had  even  dipped  his  quill  into  the  soot. 

"  Mr.  William  Flynt  presents  his  complements  "  was  another 
promising  start — he  had  got  a  debt-demanding  letter  once  at  a 
boarding-house  with  this  austerely  courteous  overture — but 
alas  ! — marvel  on  marvel — there  did  not  appear  to  be  a  single 
"  complement,"  whether  in  the  Old  Testament  or  the  New.  Not 
a  very  courteous  people,  the  Jews,  he  thought,  under  either 
dispensation.  This  happy-go-lucky  hunt  for  words — an  exciting 
steeplechase  in  which  one  skipped  over  spacious  histories  and 
major  prophets  with  the  chance  of  tumbling  on  the  very  word — 
began  to  be  an  absorbing  substitute  for  ratting. 

"  The  Epistles  of  James  "  suddenly  caught  his  eye.  Ah,  here 
was  a  complete  guide  to  letter-writing,  he  felt  hopefully ;  what 
was  good  enough  for  James  would  do  for  William.  But  when 
written  out,  "  William,  the  son  of  Caleb,  of  Frog  Farm,  to  Jinny 
Quarles  of  Blackwater  Hall,  Little  Bradmarsh,  greeting  "  did  not 
seem  quite  the  correct  opening.  An  Epistle  of  John  was,  even 
more  misguiding.  "  The  Elder  to  the  Elect  or  Well-Beloved  !  " 
Clearly  inappropriate  to  the  point  of  absurdity  ! 

Still,  with  modifications.  Epistles  must  surely  be  valid  models. 


i66  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

So  he  started  writing  and  re-writing,  wrestling  and  hunting  and 
polishing.  But  the  word-chase  had  now  to  be  supplemented  by 
a  paper-chase.  How  keep  pace  in  paper  with  this  orgy  of  pen- 
manship ?  Every  corner  of  the  house  was  ransacked,  with 
meagre  results  :  he  even  meditated  stealing  back  his  own  letter 
from  his  mother,  knowing  it  had  a  blank  fly-sheet,  but  it  was 
always  jealously  guarded.  It  was  not  till  he  came  on  Farmer 
Gale's  boy — schoolward  bound — and  paid  him  twopence  for  the 
remains  of  a  penny  copy-book  that  he  could  surrender  himself 
freely  to  the  labours  of  the  file.  An  hour  before  this  large 
laying-in  of  material,  he  had  gone  through  a  curious  crisis.  He 
had  found  in  his  purse,  in  a  last  desperate  quest,  a  piece  of  paper 
which,  unfolded,  afforded  a  welcome  white  surface.  He  was 
composing  quite  a  successful  letter  upon  it  when,  on  turning  it 
over,  he  came  upon  the  address  of  the  forgotten  blue-eyed 
charmer  of  the  Chelmsford  train.  With  frowning  brow  he  tore 
it  into  small  pieces.  It  was  not  merely  that  the  letter  was 
spoilt  for  sending  :  it  was  the  juxtaposition  with  Jinny — back 
to  back — that  seemed  suddenly  profane. 


IV 

After  several  days'  gestation,  many  words  and  turns  of  expres- 
sion having  to  be  rejected  and  replaced  by  phrases  whose  spelling 
could  be  ascertained  from  the  Bible,  the  letter  emerged  as 
hereunder  in  a  pale  and  aqueous  ink  : 

"  William  Flynt  to  the  Damsel  of  Blackwater  Hall  greeting. 
This  epistle  doth  proclaim  in  the  name  of  the  generations  of 
Frog  Farm  that  Methuselah  shall  not  come  to  pass  here  hence- 
forward, inasmuch  as  behold  here  am  I  to  purchase  whatsoever 
is  verily  to  be  desired  from  Chipstone,  be  it  candles  or  oil  or 
spice  or  any  manner  of  thing  whatsoever,  nor  shall  you  carry 
forth  aught  hence,  for  lo  !  we  will  make  no  further  covenant 
with  you  or  aught  that  is  yours.  Peace  be  with  you,  as  thank 
God  it  leaves  me  at  present. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  William  Flynt. 

"  P.S. — Let  not  your  horn  be  exalted,  nor  speak  with  a  stiff 
neck,  for  surely  this  is  not  the  way  to  find  grace  in  the  eyes  of 
the  discerning." 


WILL  AT  HOME  167 

But  even  this  exalted  effusion  did  not  survive  the  first  glow  of 
satisfaction,  for  although  it  was  treasured  up  as  too  good  to 
destroy,  and  did  not  sound  unlike  the  language  that  the  Brothers 
and  Sisters  held  in  the  meeting-house,  he  could  not  remember 
ever  seeing  a  letter  thus  couched.  It  was  succeeded  by  a  homelier 
version,  in  which  the  word  "  Epistle  "  stood  out  as  the  only 
connecting-link.  With  a  composition  playing  now  for  safety, 
and  mainly  monosyllabic,  it  would  be  a  poor  diplomacy  not  to 
work  in  one  high-class  word,  of  whose  spelling  he  was  sure. 

"  This  Epistle  is  to  say,"  the  new  version  began  abruptly, 
"  that  we  don't  need  you  to  call  on  Frydays " 

Good  heavens  !  Even  Friday  was  not  to  be  found  in  the 
Bible.  Pursuing  this  astonishing  line  of  investigation,  he  reaUzed 
that  Sunday  itself  was  absent  from  its  pages.  The  Bible  without 
Sunday  !     0  incredible  discoveries  of  the  illuminated  ! 

He  altered  it,  following  Genesis,  to  the  "  sixth  day,"  but  then 
came  a  paralysing  doubt  whether  it  was  not  the  fifth,  for  how 
could  you  rest  on  Sunday  if  that  was  not  the  seventh  ?  He 
casually  remarked  to  his  mother  that  it  was  odd  they  did  not 
rest  on  the  seventh  day,  as  commanded  in  Genesis.  She  explained 
to  him  that  Sunday  was  the  Lord's  Day,  but  he  seemed  dis- 
satisfied with  the  argument.  Perhaps  Moses  &  Son  were  not 
so  wrong,  he  remarked,  repenting  of  his  resentment  against 
them  for  bein^  closed  that  Saturdav. 

He  woke  up  the  next  morning  with  the  solution  of  dodging 
the  mention  of  the  day  and  merely  relieving  Jinny  of  the  duty 
of  "  markiting  "  for  them.  He  felt  sure  that  this  word  could 
be  found,  remembering  a  text  about  two  sparrows  being  sold 
for  a  farthing.  But  to  his  chagrin  it  was  not  in  the  "  markit  " 
that  they  were  sold.  In  steeplechasing  for  the  word,  he  tumbled 
on  a  text  in  Hosea  :  ''  Blow  ye  the  cornet  in  Gibeah,  and  the 
trumpet  in  Ramah,"  and  that  seemed  like  an  omen.  Yes,  he 
would  blow  it  in  Bradmarsh,  if  not  in  Ramah.  Let  him  wait 
till  she  came  with  the  horn  ;  then  after  whelming  her  with  the 
wonder  of  his  execution,  he  could,  face  to  face  and  free  of  orthog- 
raphy, bid  her  trouble  Frog  Farm  no  more.  And  the  postscript 
of  his  great  letter,  "  Let  not  your  horn  be  exalted,  nor  speak 
with  a  stiff  neck,"  rang  through  his  mind  again,  like  a  prophetic 
warning  against  overweening  damsels. 

"  He's  come  back  a  new  soul,"  Martha  reported  to  Caleb,  with 
shining  eyes.     "  He's  found  God." 


i68  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Caleb  shook  his  head  sceptically.  "  He's  too  boxed  up  for 
that — he  don't  open  his  heart  enough." 

"  But  he  opens  the  Bible,"  urged  Martha,  "  and  he  won't 
close  it  even  for  meals.     I  can  never  get  it  for  myself  nowadays." 

"  Dedn't  you  read  me  as  the  Devil  can  spout  Scripture  ? " 
said  Caleb  shrewdly. 

"  For  shame,  Caleb.  Anybody  can  see  how  changed  the  boy 
is — the  only  thing  that  makes  me  anxious  is  his  Sabbatarian 
leanings.  Suppose  he  should  go  and  join  the  Seventh-Day 
Baptists." 

"  Dip  hisself  o'  Saturdays  :  " 

^'  No,  no — 'tis  those  that  keep  Sunday  on  Saturday.  There's 
two  in  Long  Bradmarsh,  but  I  hope  Will  won't  go  straying  into 
strange  paths." 

"  You  better  enlighten  him,"  said  Caleb.  "  Them  as  is 
powerful  enough  to  carry  boxes  from  Chips  tone  ain't  alius  bright 
in  the  brain-pan.  Oi  count  it  'ud  be  aukard  if  he  fared  to 
keep  Sunday  on  Saturday,  bein'  as  he'd  want  the  Sunday  dishes 
fust  and  we'd  get  'em  cold." 

"  There's  higher  considerations  than  the  stomach,"  said 
Martha  severely. 

"  Thi  stomach  ain't  low  and  it  ain't  high,"  maintained  Caleb. 
"  The  Lord  put  the  stomach  in  the  middle  so  as  we  shouldn't 
neither  worship  it  nor  forgit  it." 

"  The  only  Sunday  meal  that  matters,"  persisted  Martha, 
*^  is  the  bread  and  the  wine,  and  though  there's  no  Lord's  table 
nigh,  such  as  I  could  find  dozens  of  in  London,  nor  nobody  to 
worship  with  except  you,  yet  if  you  go  on  scoffing,  my  duty  to 
my  Brethren  and  Sisters  of  the  synagogue  will  be  to  withdraw 
from  you." 

"  And  where  will  you  goo  ?  "  he  asked  in  alarm. 

"  I  won't  go  anywhere — '  withdraw '  only  means  that  it  is 
forbidden  to  break  bread  with  you." 

He  was  relieved.  "  Oi  don't  mind  so  long  as  you  don't  goo 
away." 

"  And  what  will  you  do  in  the  day  of  Ezekiel  thirty-eight, 
when  Gog  and  Magog  dash  themselves  to  pieces  against  Israel  ? 
And  when  the  eighth  of  Daniel  comes  to  pass,  and  the  Great 
Horn  is  broken  and  the  Little  Horn  stamps  upon  the  host  of 
heaven  ?  " 

"  Oi  count  it  won't  be  just  yet,"  he  said  uneasily. 


WILL  AT  HOME  169 

"  You  count  wrong.  To  my  reckoning  the  two  thousand  three 
hundred  days  of  Daniel  are  nigh  up.  In  the  great  day  of  Isaiah 
four,  when  the  Tabernacle  rises  again  with  the  cloud  and  smoke 
and  the  flaming  fire,  the  people  of  God  shall  rise  too  from  their 
graves  wMe  the  others  sleep." 

"  Then  you  can  wake  me  up,  dear  heart,"  he  said,  "  bein'  as 
you're  sure  to  be  up." 

She  shook  her  head.  "  Tou  were  always  up  first,  sweetheart, 
but  that  day  you'll  sleep  on  and  I'll  have  no  power  to  rouse 
you — unless,  says  Isaiah,  you  ^  look  unto  me  and  be  saved.' 
'  Dust  to  dust ' — that  shows  we're  not  immortal  by  nature." 

"  But  ef  it's  comin'  so  soon,  Oi  shan't  be  in  my  grave  at  all,"  he 
urged  anxiously,  "  and  Oi  can  push  into  the  Tabernacle." 

"  No  more  easy  than  for  wasps  to  push  into  the  hive.  You've 
seen  the  bees  push  'em  back." 

"  But  one  or  two  does  get  in  and  Oi  reckon  Oi'll  take  hold  o' 
your  skirt,  same  as  you  been  readin'  me." 

"  I  read  you  there'll  be  ten  men  to  take  hold  of  it,"  she  said. 

"  Nine  other  men  !  "  he  cried  angrily.  "  But  they  won't  have 
no  right  to  take  hold  o'  my  wife's  skirt." 

"  That's  what  Zechariah  says — ^  ten  men  of  all  languages.'  " 

Caleb's  gloom  relaxed.  "  He  w^as  thinkin'  o'  Che'msford  and 
sech-like  great  places  full  o'  furriners,"  he  said  decisively.  "  Here 
there's  onny  Master  Peartree,  and  the  shepherd  ain't  aGoloiath. 
Oi'll  soon  get  riddy  o'  him,  happen  he  don't  hook  hisself  to  you 
with  his  crook." 

"  But  ril  puU  in  Will  too,"  said  Martha. 


V 

But  Jinny  did  not  appear  on  Friday  with  the  musical  instru- 
ment. Only  the  unexpected  arrived — in  the  shape  of  Bundock. 
That  royal  messenger  was  visibly  hipped  as  he  delivered  the 
letter  to  Will. 

"  A  woman's  writing  !  "  he  observed  reproachfully.  "  That 
means  dragging  me  here  time  and  again  !  " 

But  Will  had  broken  open  the  high-class  adhesive  envelope 
and  was  already  absorbed  in  the  letter. 

"  Sir, — Mr.    Quarles    thanks    Mr.    William    Flynt    for   his 
esteemed  order,  but  regrets  to  inform  him  that  a  coach-horn  of 


170  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

suitable  size  for  a  man  is  not  to  be  had  in  Chipstone.  They 
have  not  even  got  a  little  hunting-horn  like  mine.  I  will, 
however,  superscribe  to  Chelmsford  and  get  you  one  without 
fail.     Trusting  for  your  further  patronage, 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  Daniel  Quarles. 

"  N.B. — ^AU  orders  carried  out — or  in — with  punctuality  and 
dispatch.  Goods  sent  off  without  fail  to  any  part  of  Europe, 
America,  and  Australia. 

"  P.S. — Please  inform  your  hond.  parents  that  as  she 
brought  q.f.  of  groceries  that  Tuesday  I  shall  not  call  again  till 
I  deliver  your  instrument." 

So  Jinny  had  got  in  first  in  the  pen-fight  !  And  her  letter 
bowled  him  over,  not  only  by  its  bland  assumption  that  she  was 
already  established  as  his  carrier,  but  by  the  fluency  an  d  scholar- 
ship of  its  style,  with  its  incomprehensible  *'  superscribe  "  and 
"  q.f."  He  felt  baffled  too  and  even  snubbed  by  the  signature, 
which  gave  her  a  businesslike  remoteness,  and  even  a  legitimate 
status  as  a  mere  representative  of  the  masculine,  besides  making 
him  feel  he  had  lost  a  chance  by  not  sending  off  one  of  his  many 
scrawls  to  the  address  of  this  same  "  Daniel  Quarles."  His 
answer  would  now  require  the  profoundest  excogitation,  he  felt, 
as  he  adjusted  her  missive  between  the  bank-notes  and  the  glove. 
There  was,  moreover,  the  material  problem  of  vying  with  this 
real  and  fashionable  correspondence  paper.  Ultimately  he  be- 
came conscious  that  Bundock  was  still  standing  at  attention. 

"  Do  you  want  anything  ?  "  he  asked  tartly. 

"  I'm  waiting  for  the  answer,"  said  Bundock  nobly,  "  or  you 
won't  catch  a  post  till  to-morrow  night  unless  you  trudge  to 
Long  Bradmarsh." 

"  Oh,  there's  no  answer — none  at  all !  Thank  you  all  the 
same." 

"  Thank  you  !  "  said  Bundock.  "  It's  not  often  folks  consider 
me  nowadays — especially  when  there's  a  woman  in  the  case. 
They  just  go  on  shuttlecocking  letters  till  my  feet  are  sore." 

"But  it  isn't  a  woman!"  said  Will  stiffly.  "  It's- just  a 
business  letter  from  Gaffer  Quarles."  And  he  pulled  it  out,  and 
the  little  glove  fell  out  with  it :  which  did  not  lessen  his 
annoyance. 

"  Daniel  Quarles  never  put  his  fist  to  a  pen  this  ten  year," 


WILL  AT  HOME  171 

asserted  Bundock.     "  He  was  glad  to  be  done  with  writing,  says 
my  father,  for  Daniel  was  never  brought  up  to  be  a  carrier,  his 
parents  never  dreaming  he'd  inherit  the  business." 
"  Why  not,  isn't  he  the  eldest  ?  " 

"  The  contrairy.     Blackwater  Hall  and  the  bit  of  land  is  one 
of  those  queer  properties  that  go  to  the  youngest,  if  you  die 
without  a  will." 
"  The  youngest  ?  " 

"  Ay,   and   that's  what  Daniel  was.     Borough   English,   'tis 
called  by  scholars,"  said  Bundock  impressively.     "  However,  he 
picked  up  a  little  from  his  brother  Sidrach,  who  had  already  set 
up  as  a  carrier  on  his  own  account  round  about  Harwich,  and  a 
pretty  business  he  did,  old  Sidrach,  says  my  father,  before  he 
was  discovered  to  be  an  owler  and  had  to  fly  to  America." 
"  Were  they  so  persecuted  ?  "  murmured  Will. 
"  And  didn't   they  deserve  it — smuggling  our  good  English 
wool  into  France  !    Pack-horses  they  loaded  with  it,  the  rascals." 
"  Oh,  I  thought  they  were  a  sect  !  " 

Bundock  laughed.  "  That's  with  an  aitch ;  though  I  dare  say 
many  a  man  owled  all  the  week  and  howled  on  Sunday — he, 
he,  he  !  Do  you  know — between  you  and  I — who  it  is  writes 
the  hymns  ?  " 

"  The  village  idiot  ! "  answered  Will  smartly.  "  You  told  me 
so  when  I  was  a  boy,"  he  added,  seeing  the  postman's  discon- 
certed expression. 

Bundock  brightened  up.  "  Ah,  I  thought  'twas  too  clever  for 
you.  But  as  for  this  letter  o'  yours,  it's  clearly  a  woman's 
handwriting,  and  if  Jinny  once  begins  writing  to  her  customers, 
it's  a  bad  look-out  for  me." 

Bundock  might  well  feel  a  grievance,  for  this  was  the  first 
letter  Jinny  had  ever  written  to  a  client,  indeed  to  anybody  with 
the  exception  of  old  Commander  Dap,  who,  clinging  to  the 
friendship  struck  up  at  his  wife's  funeral,  sent  her  birthday 
presents  and  the  gossip  of  the  Watch  Vessel.  To  him  she  had 
written  as  her  heart  and  her  illiteracy  prompted,  but  the  elegant 
epistle  received  by  Will  Flynt  was  not  achieved  without  con- 
siderable pains.  She  had  the  advantage,  however,  of  not  being 
limited  to  the  Bible  for  her  vocabulary,  possessing  as  she  did  an 
almost  modern  guide  in  the  shape  of  an  olla  podrida  of  a  Spelling- 
Book,  whose  first  edition  dated  no  further  back  than  1755,  the 
year  of  the  Lisbon  Earthquake.     *'  The  Universal  SpelHng-Book  " 


172  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

had  originally  belonged  to  the  "  owler,"  and  it  was  from  the 
almost  limitless  resources  of  this  quaint  reservoir  that,  with  a 
pardonable  desire  not  to  be  outshone  by  her  much-travelled 
neighbour,  she  culled  both  the  "  superscribe  "  defined  as  "  to 
write  over  "  and  the  q.f .  (given  in  the  "  List  of  Abbreviations  " 
as  standing  for  the  Latin  of  "  a  sufficient  quantity "),  except 
that  she  misread  the  long  "  s  "  for  an  "  f."  The  immaculate 
spelling  was,  however,  no  mean  feat,  for  the  book's  vocabulary 
was  very  incomplete  and  devoid  of  order,  so  that  she  had  almost 
as  much  steeplechasing  to  do  as  her  rival  letter-writer.  More- 
over, she  must  fain  study  whole  columns  of  traps  for  the  unwary, 
where  the  terms  of  her  own  occupation  appeared  with  disconcert- 
ing frequency.  If  there  was  not  in  the  letter  any  necessity  for 
distinguishing  between  "  glutinous  "  and  "  gluttonous,"  "  rheum  " 
and  "  Rome,"  or  any  risk  of  confusing  a  "  widow  "  with  a  "  relic," 
still "  seller,"  "  fare,"  "  due  " — any  of  which  she  might  have  needed 
— all  had  their  dangerous  doubles,  and  she  did  not  write  "  call " 
without  carefully  discriminating  it  from  "  Cawl,  of  a  Wig  or 
Bowels."  "  Punctuality  and  dispatch  "  was  lifted  bodily  from 
Miss  Gentry's  billheads,  and  if  she  did  not  offer  to  send  off  goods 
to  Asia  and  Africa,  it  was  because  only  "  Europe,  America,  and 
Australia  "  figured  on  Mr.  Flippance's  posters. 

The  recipient  of  this  impressive  communication  was  staggered 
by  the  strides  in  female  education  made  since  his  boyhood.  He 
betook  himself  at  once — to  his  mother's  joy — to  the  Bible,  like 
a  Cromwell  before  a  great  battle.  Martha  had  stolen  the  book 
back  to  the  kitchen  and  was  pondering  texts  anxiously  when  he 
wandered  in  to  hunt  for  it. 

"  Who  sent  you  a  letter  ?  "  she  inquired  uneasily. 

"  Old  Quarles,"  he  answered  readily.  "  It's  about  an  order  he 
can't  supply,  and  he  asks  me  to  tell  you  his  granddaughter  won't 
be  coming  to-day." 

Martha's  face  lit  up.  "What  a  pity!"  she  cried.  "She 
might  have  taken  my  bonnet  to  Miss  Gentry  to  be  re-trimmed." 
Martha  had  become  reconciled  to  this  minor  vanity,  now  it  was 
strategically  unnecessary.  "  However,  your  young  legs  can  do 
that,  dearie,  now  they're  back,  can't  they  ?  " 

"  With  pleasure,  mother,"  he  said,  all  unconscious  of  the  lapsed 
plan.     "  Why  waste  money  on  carriers  ?  " 

She  kissed  him  passionately,  but  seeing  his  anxiety  to  be  at 
the  Bible,  she  released  him. 


WILL  AT  HOME  173 

"  I  should  look  at  Revelation,  one,  ten,  Willie,"  she  advised, 
"  and  you'll  understand  why  the  Sabbath " 

"  Yes,  yes,"  he  interrupted  soothingly. 

"  Also  Colossians,  two,  sixteen  and  seventeen — the  seventh 
day  is  but  a  shadow  of  things  to  come." 

"  I  see,"  he  said,  escaping. 

It  took  hours  of  hard  theological  study — indeed  till  Saturday 
morning — before  the  reply  to  Jinny  shaped  itself  : 

"  Sir, — ^Mr.  William  Flynt  thanks  Mr.  Daniel  Quarles  for 
his  esteemed  epistle,  and  regrets  to  learn  that  a  coach-horn  of 
suitable  size  for  a  gentelman  is  not  to  be  had  in  Chipstone.  I 
beseech  you,  however,  not  to  superscribe  to  Chelmsford  as 
Methuselah  cannot  fetch  such  a  compass,  and  the  righteous 
man  regardeth  his  beast.  Neither  do  I  require  a  horn  at  her 
hand  now  or  henceforwards. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  William  Flynt. 

"  P.S. — Do  you  think  that  a  maiden  of  your  years  aught  to 
superscribe  alone  to  Chelmsford,  a  city  full  of  lewdness  and 
abominations,  where  men  use  deceit  with  their  tongues  and 
the  poison  of  asps  is  under  their  lips  ?  " 

"  What  are  you  writing,  Will  ?  "  said  his  mother,  coming  in 
to  sun  herself  in  his  holy  studies. 

"  Nothing."  He  put  his  hand  over  the  page  of  the  copy-book, 
forgetting  she  could  not  read  it. 

"  Are  you  waiting  to  Jinny  ?  "  she  inquired  suspiciously. 

"  No,  no— it's  Daniel,"  he  corrected. 

"  Daniel !  "  she  said  in  amaze.     "  About  the  Sabbath  ?  " 

"  No,  about  the  horn,"  he  blurted  out  petulantly. 

"  The  Horn  !  "  She  was  wildly  excited.  "  Is  it  the  Little 
Horn  or  the  Great  Horn  ?  " 

He  was  amazed.     "  Well  it  began  with  the  little  horn " 

Martha  was  radiant.  She  poured  forth  her  own  theory  of  the 
Beast  in  Daniel,  and  emboldened  by  his  silent  agreement — when 
his  daze  changed  into  comprehension  of  her  misunderstanding — 
she  proceeded  to  elaborate  her  interpretation  of  the  two  thousand 
three  hundred  days  of  sacrifice.  He,  meantime,  was  finally  de- 
ciding to  turn  ''  Daniel  "  into  "  Miss  "  except  in  the  address. 


174  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 


VI 


But  Will's  letter  could  not  be  posted — for  many  reasons.  He 
possessed  neither  an  envelope  to  vie  with  Jinny's,  nor  one  that 
was  closed  with  outside  devices,  nor  any  sealing-wax  to  make 
his  letter  its  own  envelope  ;  he  could  only  fold  it  into  a  cocked- 
hat  and  deliver  it  himself.  Apart  from  these  material  reasons, 
he  could  not  well  let  Bundock  carry  an  answer,  when  he  had 
denied  there  would  be  any,  and  he  shrank  from  conducting  his 
affairs  under  that  official  inquisition :  moreover,  haste  was 
imperative  if  he  was  to  save  the  girl  from  that  difficult  and 
dangerous  journey,  for  "  superscribe  "  conveyed  to  him  a  sense 
of  precipitation,  and  he  saw  her  cart  almost  stampeding  to 
Chelmsford.  At  any  moment  she  might  set  out  in  quest  of  the 
Great  Horn.  That  was  why  he  abandoned  the  idea  of  toiling  to 
Chipstone  to  emulate  her  refined  writing  materials.  He  must 
hie  to  Blackwater  Hall  that  very  afternoon  and  play  postman. 
He  would  not,  of  course,  enter  the  house,  but  would  find  a  way 
of  slipping  the  letter  in. 

The    surreptitious    deed   he    meditated    gave    him    almost    a 
skulking  air  as  he  neared  the  Common,  and  he  shrank  from  the 
observation  of  all  he  met,  though  with  the  exception  of  Uncle 
Lilliwhyte  in  a  corduroy  sleeved  waistcoat,  driving  cows  with 
a   weed-hook,  and   an    old   crone   who    stopped    and   muttered 
with  twisted  head,  he  saw  only  frightened  partridges  whirring 
above  or  rabbits   and  field-mice  scurrying  at  his  feet.     Near 
Blackwater  Hall  he   encountered  two    of    Jinny's  milch-goats 
tethered,  pasturing  on  the  hedgerows,  and    their  bleat  had  a 
cynical  ring.     The  Common  itself  seemed  almost  to  meet  the 
sky,  for  clouds  had  gathered  as  suddenly  as  the  crowd  by  the 
Silverlane  Pump.     He  was  feeling  dispirited  as  he  stole  towards 
the  house,  but  as  he  caught  sight  of  the  stables  and  barn  at  the 
rear,  it  seemed  a  happy  idea  to  plant  his  note  in  some  obtrusive 
coign.     His  heart  beat  like  a  raw  burglar's  as  he  stood  surveying 
from  afar  the  primitive  sheds  whose  roofs  were  thatch,  whose 
gates  palings,  whose  sides  faggots,  and  in  one  of  which  he  could 
see  Methusalem's  head  in  a  trough  of  oats.     The  stable-shed 
would  be  the  surest  place,  he  thought,  or  perhaps  he  could  pin 
the  note  on  to  the  harness  he  saw^  hanging  in  an  adjoining  shed 
from  nails  in  the  beams.     Coming  nearer  to  peer  at  Methusalem's 


WILL  AT  HOME  175 

manger,  he  was  startled  by  the  sight  of  a  brown  smock-frocked 
figure  crouched  on  the  littered,  dungy  floor  and  belatedly  brushing 
Methusalem's  fetlocks.  Before  he  could  escape  he  saw  the 
wizened,  snow-bearded,  horn-spectacled  face  turned  up  at  him, 
and  heard  himself  recognized  in  a  weakened  but  unmistakable 
voice. 

"  Why,  bless  my  soul  !     Ef  that  bain't  little  Willie  Flynt !  " 

Daniel  Quarles  rose  and  straightened  himself  to  his  full  height, 
but  nothing  in  Little  Bradmarsh  had  seemed  to  Will  so  pitifully 
shrunken.  "  Little "  Willie  Flynt  indeed  towered  over  the 
patriarch  who  had  once  seemed  Herculean  to  him.  Yet  if  the 
robustiousness  that  the  old  carrier  had  preserved  in  his  eighties 
had  vanished  at  last,  there  was  still  fire  in  his  eye  and  a  fang  or 
two  in  his  mouth. 

"  Hope  you  are  well,  Mr.  Quarles,"  said  Will,  recovering  from 
the  double  shock  of  discovering  and  being  discovered. 

"  No,  you  don't,  my  lad,"  piped  the  Gaffer.  "  Did,  you'd  a 
come  sooner,  seein'  as  Time  is  gettin'  away  from  me." 

"  Did  Jin — did  your  granddaughter  tell  you  I  was  back  ?  " 

"  She  ain't  scarcely  told  me  nawthen  else." 

Will's  cheeks  burned. 

"  You  ain't  come  back  improved,  says  she." 

Will's  flush  grew  redder. 

"  But  Oi  don't  agree  with  her — you've  growed  like  a  prize 
marrow.  Come  into  the  house  and  she  shall  make  you  a  dish 
o'  tay — Oi  don't  drink  it  myself,  bein'  as  Oi  promised  John 
Wesley." 

"  No,  thank  you — I'd  rather  talk  where  we  are." 

"  Well,  Oi  can't  inwoite  you  in  here — 'tis  too  mucky."  He 
gave  Methusalem's  tail  a  final  flick  with  the  brush.  "  And  it's 
blowin'  up  for  rine.  We'll  goo  into  the  barn."  And  he  led  the 
way  imperiously  round  by  a  great  and  ramifying  apple-tree  that 
hid  a  little  black  door  secured  by  a  padlock  and  infinite  knots  of 
string. 

''  One  has  to  be  witty,"  he  commented,  patiently  undoing  the 
complications,  "  with  so  many  thieves  about  to  steal  my  dole 
hay." 

Will  had  not  heard  of  these  thieves,  and  thought  Little 
Bradmarsh  must  be  changed  indeed,  but  he  waited  silently, 
wondering  what  to  do  with  his  note.  And  as  he  stood  thus, 
there  came   from  the   cottage   the   sound   of   a   girl's   singing. 


176  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Fortunately    it   was   not   satirical,  so  Will   could  hear  it  with 
pleasure  : 

"  Of  all  the  horses  in  the  merry  greenwood 
^he  bob-tailed  mare  bears  the  bells  azuay.''^ 

"  Always  jolly,  my  little  mavis,"  said  the  patriarch, 
fumbling  on,  and,  unable  to  resist  the  infection,  his  sepulchral 
bass  voice  took  up  the  Carters'  Chorus  :  • 

"  ^here  is  Hey^  there  is  Ree, 
There  is  Hoo^  there  is  Gee " 


"  Oi  wouldn't  unlock  the  barn,"  he  broke  off  to  explain  as  the 
door  swung  open,  "  ef  Oi  hadn't  such  good  company."  He  stood 
peering  suspiciously  into  the  tall  raftered  and  beamed  glooms  ; 
redolent  of  old  hay  and  punctuated  with  a  few  cobwebbed  and 
rusty  instruments  amid  the  endless  Htter.  Will's  eye  was 
fascinated  by  an  old  wine-barrel  flanked  by  a  chaff-cutter  and  a 
turnip-cutter  and  covered  with  boards  and  weights.  He  divined 
it  held  corn  and  was  thus  closed  against  rats,  and  a  whiff  of 
aniseed  came  up  in  memory,  and  in  a  flash  he  saw  the  faces  of 
Tony  Flip  and  the  Deacon — and  himself  flying  after  a  carrier's 
cart. 

"  They've  stole  my  flail,"  cried  the  Gaffer. 

"  Why,  there  it  is,  under  that  straw,"  said  Will. 

"  Oh,  ay.  But  there  was  more  logs,  Oi'll  goo  bail.  Drat  'em, 
can't  they  chop  for  theirselves  ?     It'll  be  that  Uncle  Lilliwhyte." 

"  Oh,  but  he's  only  too  honest,"  said  Will  incautiously. 

"  There  ain't  nobody  honest,"  barked  the  Gaffer. 

"  But  he  sent  me  an  adder "  he  began. 

"  Not  he.  'Twas  Jinny  told  him  to  send  the  adder.  He'd  ha' 
kept  your  sixpence  and  let  you  whistle  for  your  sarpint.  But 
next  time  you  want  an  adder,  you  come  to  me." 

"  Do  you  sell  'em  too  ?  "  he  murmured,  surprised. 

"  Oi  be  an  adder  1  " 

"  W^hat  do  you  mean  ?  " 

His  spectacles  glowed  strangely.  "  Read  your  Bible,  young 
man — Dan  is  an  adder  in  the  path,  what  biteth  the  horse's  heels, 
so  that  the  rider  should  fall  backwards — that's  the  blessing  of 
Jacob — and  let  no  man  try  to  ride  roughshod  over  the  likes 


o'  me." 


WILL  AT  HOME  177 

Will  shrank  back  before  the  passion  of  his  words.  Indeed  in 
that  gloomy  old  barn  he  began  to  feel  a  bit  nervous. 

''  I've  brought  a  note  for  Jinny,"  he  said  hastily.  "  Will  you 
give  it  to  her  ?  " 

The  old  man  took  the  cocked-hat.  "  Mr.  Daniel  Quarles  !  "  he 
read  slowly.     "  But  it's  for  me  1  " 

Will's  blush  was  now  papaverous.  "  No — no  !  "  he  stam- 
mered.    It  was  a  conjuncture  he  had  not  foreseen. 

The  fire  in  the  old  eye  leapt  up  at  the  contradiction,  shot 
through  the  spectacles.  "  Plain  as  a  pikestaff — Mr.  Daniel 
Quarles  !  And  then  you  has  the  imperence  to  say  there  ain't  no 
thieves.  But  ye  can't  bamboozle  me.  Oi  could  read  afore  you 
could  woipe  your  nose  with  a  muckinger,  ay,  and  my  feyther 
afore  me.  Carriers  ha'  we  been  for  over  a  hundred  year,  and  my 
big  brother  Sidrach  he  had  his  own  pack-horses  loaded  up  with 
waluable  stuff  and  writ  me  a  piece  ten  year  ago  come  haysel, 
sayin'  as  he  hoped  Oi  should  jarney  to  see  him,  and  please  God 
Oi  will,  he  gittin'  old." 

"  But  where  is  he  ?  "  asked  Will,  glad  that  the  Gaffer's  mono- 
logue had  drifted  from  its  angry  beginning. 

"  In  Babylon  !  " 

"  Babylon  ?  "  gasped  Will,  whose  recent  theological  excursions 
had  made  him  almost  at  home  in  that  purpureal  city. 

"  That's  my  nickname  for  Che'msford,  chuck-full  o'  lewdness 
and  Church-folk.  But  Oi've  been  meanin'  to  goo  and  look 
Sidrach  up  and  hear  all  about  his  travels,  he  bein'  a  rare  one  for 
adwentures,  but  somehow  what  with  my  carryin'  work  and  one 
thing  and  the  tother  my  days  fly  by — like  the  Book  says — 
swifter  than  a  weaver's  shuttle.  Happen  lucky,  though,  Oi'll 
git  over  there  to-year." 

"  I  hope  so,"  murmured  Will  vaguely. 

"  No  you  don't,  drat  you  !  "  said  the  veteran  with  sudden 
viciousness.  "  Tain't  your  care  whether  Oi  ever  clap  eyes  on 
my  beloved  brother  agen.  A  'nation  cowld  day  it  was  he  had 
to  goo  away — the  Brad  all  ice  and  they  should  be  tellin'  of  the 
Che'msford  coach  as  come  in  without  the  driver,  and  he  fallen 
down  on  the  road,  frozen  stiff  as  a  sparrow." 

"  What  year  was  that  ?  "  asked  Will,  to  keep  the  conversation 
on  this  more  agreeable  level. 

"  It  was  the  year  my  brother  Sidrach  went  away,"  said  Daniel 
Quarles  simply.     "  'Nation  cowld.     We  heerd  that  in  Lunnon 

M 


178  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  river  was  as  froze  as  ourn,  and  flue-full  o'  sports — booths 
and  turnabouts  and  pigs  roasted  whole,  and  great  crowds  to  see 
a  young  bear  baited.  But  feyther's  cart  w^ent  to  and  fro  Chip- 
stone  just  the  same,  and  brought  the  news  as  how  a  woman  was 
burned  at  Newgate  for  coinin' — it  dedn't  seem  wery  dreadful  in 
that  weather.  Waterloo  year  that  was  another  cowld  winter — 
all  the  marsh  ditches  was  solid  ice,  and  all  the  eels  was  found 
dead  and  frozen.  Couldn't  eat  'em  neither,  not  after  the  first 
day,  they  stank  so.  That  numb  was  my  fingers  Oi  could  scarce 
howld  the  reins,  and  you'd  ha'  thought  by  my  breath  Oi  was  a 
wicked  smoker.  But  'twas  wunnerful  times,  and  we  heaped  up 
a  deadly  great  pile  o'  fagots  and  bushes  for  the  beacon,  top  o' 
yonder  rise  where  ye  see  Beacon  Hill  Farm." 

"  Ah,  the  bonfire  to  celebrate  the  victory  !  "  said  Will,  rejoiced 
to  find  irascibility  cooled  into  reminiscence. 

"  Wictory  !  That  was  the  name  o'  Nelson's  ship  as  that  silly 
old  Dap  should  say  he  sarved  in.  Nay,  this  was  but  a  bonfire 
to  be  lit  when  Bony  landed.  All  along  Blackwater  we  was 
ready  for  the  inwasion,  and  when  the  beacon  was  fired,  that  was 
to  be  the  signal.  The  soldiers  was  to  goo  to  the  coast  and  the 
ciwilians  inland.  But  Bony  never  come,  and  'twas  a  great 
waste.  And  Sidrach  never  come  neither.  'Nation  cowld  the 
day  he  went  away — Oi  moind  me  gooin'  through  a  foot  o'  snow 
across  Chipstone  poor-piece  to  the  Church  to  see  the  Knight 
Templar  what  was  dug  up  in  the  north  aisle,  pickled  inside  three 
coffins,  but  they'd  put  him  back  in  the  outer  lead  time  Oi 
arrived.  They  should  say  it  was  a  sort  o'  mushroom  ketchup  as 
kept  him  together  for  the  Resurrection  Day — a  bit  blackish,  but 
wellnigh  as  sound  and  good-lookin'  as  you." 

It  was  a  compliment  that  made  the  young  man  shudder  again. 

"  Ah,  there  is  the  rain  !  "  he  exclaimed,  with  relief  at  the  hearty 
patter  on  the  apple-tree. 

But  the  old  man  would  not  be  fobbed  off  so  enjoyable  a  topic. 
"  Three  coffins — lead,  ellum,  and  a  shell — 'twas  a  witty  way  agin 
them  body-snatchers — you  ain't  safe  agin  thieves  even  in  your 
tomb.  And  when  you're  above  ground  they  tries  to  steal  your 
wery  letters."     He  pulled  open  the  note. 

"  It's  merely  addressed  to  you  as  head  of  the  business,"  Will 
explained. 

"  Ay,  that  Oi  be,  though  the  youngest.  He  that  is  last  shall 
be  fust,  says  the  Book,  ay,  and  the  Law  too,  though  'twasn't 


WILL  AT  HOME  179 

fair  to  Sidrach  to  my  thinkin',  bein'  agin  nature.  And  next 
time  a  letter  comes  for  me,  do  ye  don't  bring  it  and  play  your 
tricks,  but  let  it  come  natural  through  Bundock's  grandson. 
What's  this  ?  ^  Mr.  William  Flynt  thanks  Miss  Quarles  for  her 
esteemed  Epistle.'  And  who  is  Miss  Quarles,  and  what's  she  been 
writin'  to  you  ?  " 

"  About — about  business,"  said  Will. 

"  There  ain't  no  Miss  Quarles  in  the  business,"  said  the  old 
man  testily.  "  That  be  my  business,  and  Oi  lets  Jinny  amuse 
herself  jauntin'  to  and  fro,  pore  gal,  she  bein'  that  lonely  on  the 
Common  and  afeared  o'  dangerous  charriters.  Rare  mistakes, 
she  makes,  bein'  onny  a  gal,  and  costs  me  a  pritty  penny.  But 
it  'ud  cost  me  more  ef  Oi  dedn't  stop  at  home  and  guard  the 
house  from  thieves.  And  now  she  wastes  more  o'  my  hard- 
earned  dubs  writin'  to  you  as  is  a  neighbour — drat  the  child, 
ain't  that  got  a  tongue  ?  '  A  suitable  horn  ?  '  Dash  my 
buttons  !  What  do  you  be  wantin'  with  a  horn — you  bain't  a 
guard  or  a  postman,  be  you  ?  " 

"  No,  but !  "  he  stammered.     The  explanation  was   not 

simple. 

"  '  Oi  beseech  you,  however,  not  to  superscroibe  to  Che'ms- 
ford  '  .  .  .  '  the  righteous  man  regardeth  his  beast.'  Dang  your 
imperence  !  Why  shouldn't  Oi  goo  to  Che'msford  ?  Oi  ain't 
seen  him  these  sixty  year,  and  do  ye  don't  come  interferin'  'twixt 
brothers.  Sidrach  writ  me  a  piece  ten  years  agoo  come  haysel, 
arxin'  me  to  superscroibe  to  Che'msford,  and  Oi'll  not  be  put  off 
by  the  likes  o'  you.  You  look  here,  my  lad,  ef  you're  come 
home  to  meddle  or  make,  the  sooner  you  goos  furrin  agen,  the 
better." 

"  But  it's  not  you — it's  Miss  Quarles  I  don't  like  journeying  to 
Chelmsford.     Look  at  the  P.S." 

It  was  imprudent  counsel,  for,  as  the  Gaffer  followed  it,  his 
face  became  a  black  cloud,  the  jBre  in  his  eye  was  lightning,  the 
odd  fangs  in  his  mouth  showed  like  tigers'  tusks,  and  his  beard 
seemed  like  a  tempestuous  besom  sweeping  all  before  it. 

"  '  Lewdness  and  abominations.'  You  call  my  Jinny  a 
Jezebel !     Git  out  o'  my  house  !  " 

"  I'm  only  in  your  barn,"  Will  reminded  him,  "  and  it's 
raining,  and  you  just  said  yourself  that  Chelmsford  is  a  Babylon 
chock-full  of  abominations.  And  you'd  let  a  young  girl  super- 
scribe there  all  alone  !  " 


i8o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER  \ 

"  Jinny  shall  superscroibe  where  she  pleases  !  "  roared  the  { 
Gaffer.  "  For  over  a  hundred  year  the  Quarleses  have  super-  { 
scroibed  in  foul  weather  or  foine,  with  none  to  say  'em  nay,  and  \ 
it  ain't  for  a  looker's  son  to  come  here  dictatin'."  j 

"  I  didn't  dictate,"  said  Will,  with  a  fleeting  schoolboy  memory,  j 
"  I  wrote  it  with  my  own  hand.  Look  here,  Mr.  Quarles,"  he  \ 
went  on,  trying  another  tack,  "  you're  a  sensible  old  gent  with  I 
great  experience  of  the  world,  and  it  makes  me  frightened  to  see  \ 
that  grandchild  of  yours  gadding  about  so  far  from  home,  and  | 
sometimes  not  getting  back  here  till  dark."  \ 

"  That  ain't  timorsome — onny  when  she's  alone  here,"  he  \ 
added  cunningly.  \ 

"  Maybe,  but  with  such  a  pretty  girl !  "  j 

"  Ay,  she's  like  a  little  bird  with  her  little  fitten — and  alius  | 
singin'  like  one  too — all  the  day  that  goos  about  singin',  '  Fol  \ 

de  rol '  "  i 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Will,  wincing.  \ 

"  And  Oi'd  best  tear  up  your  letter — she  don't  want  to  read  \ 

about  lewdness  and  abomination  except  in  the  Howly  Book.    And  j 

Oi  count  she  has  enough  o'  that  on  Sunday  with  you  Peculiars."  \ 

"  It  is  better  she  should  read  about  it  than  scutter  about  seeing  j 

it.     A  cart  ain't  a  suitable  place  for  a  girl,"  \ 

''  A  cart's  as  suitable  for  Jinny  as  a  horn  for  you,"  retorted  i 

the  old  man,  bridling  up  again.     "  Oi  suspicion  you're  plottin'  to  1 

steal  her  away  from  me."  I 

"  What !  "     Will's  cheeks  burned  with  indignation.  \ 

"  And  Oi  count  you've  got  your  eye  on  the  cart  too,  hke  you  j 

bolted  off  to  Harwich  with  your  feyther's  wagon.     There  won't  J 

be  naught  left  for  me  but  the  poorhouse.     But  Oi'd  die  sooner."^ 

He  was  almost  blubbering  now  with  self-pity.  - 

"  Oi  saved  a  mort  o'  money  once,"  he  said,  "  though  it  took  a ; 

deadly  time  scrapin'  the  dubs  together,  what  with  the  expense  o'j 

dinner  at  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  and  the  boss's  feed — fower  parcels^ 

or  fowerty,  Oi  never  stinted  him  o'  his  peck  o'  chaff,  and  three  j 

and  a  half  pound  o'  oats  and  the  same  o'  ground  beans,  and  j 

there's  folks  as  grumble  to  pay  accordin'  to  the  soize  and  compass^; 

o'  the  parcel,  though  there's  nights  your  hoss  goos  so  lame  and^ 

you're  that  pierced  with  wind  and  snow  you  got  to  knock  up  a^ 

farm  and  borry  a  hoss  to  git  home  with,  and  them  days  it  wasi 

the  barges  took  away  custom.     Old  Bidlake  used  to  goo  alongl 

canals  and  cricks  as  ain't  there  no  longer,  thank  the  Lord,  beinV? 


WILL  AT  HOME  i8i    j 

as  they  sea-walls  have  made  a  many  willages  high  and  droy.    ] 
But  Oi  had  to  pay  all  my  savin's  away  to  keep  our  name  from    | 


disgrace,  so  as  Emma  should  howd  up  her  head  in  Kingdom  Come.    '. 

He  hadn't  the  bed  he  died  in,  for  all  his  traipsin'  around  in   ^ 

Tommy  Devils  ;    but  time  Oi  went  down  to  git  Jinny,  Oi  made  I 

inquirations  among  the  tradespeople  and  paid  'em  to  the  last    I 

farden,  aldoe  soon  as  my  back  was  turned,  my  own  sister  plots  ■• 

with  her  one-eyed  little  ship's  monkey  to  pay  for  a  stone,  as  ef    ■ 

Oi'd  neglected  my  own  darter,  and  all  spiled  with  wicked  words —  ] 

did  you  ever  see  such  words  in  a  Christian  churchyard  ?  "  j 

"  No,  of  course  not,"  soothingly  murmured  Will,  to  whom  the  1 

long  rigmarole  conveyed  nothing  except  a  sense  of  pathetic  and  i 

loquacious  senility.  i 

"  Ha  !  "  said  the  Gaffer  with  satisfaction.     "  Oi  says  to  Dap,  | 

says  Oi, '  A  Churchman  like  you  may  not  see  the  blarsphemy,  but  \ 

think  what  John  Wesley  would  ha'  said  to  it.'     '  Sir,'  Oi  says  to  , 

the  old  gentleman,  '  you  jump  into  my  cart,'  says  Oi,  '  and  not  1 

a  sowd  here  shall  harm  a  hair  o'  your  wig '  ;    and  with  that  Oi  \ 

wheeled  round  my  whip,  and  bein'  then  an  able-bodied  young  ] 

man  ('twas  the  wery  fust  year  arter  feyther  died),  them  as  was  \ 

thro  win'  stones  and  cryin'  '  Knock  his  brines  out '  slunk  away  i 

like  blackbeadles,  which  was  a  pity,  seein'  as  they  missed  the  , 

be-yutiful  w^ords  he  preached  from  my  cart.     From  Chipstone  to  'j 

Che'msford  Oi  carried  him — a  dogged  piece  out  o'  my  way,  bein'  ■ 

as  he  wanted  to  preach  there  and  his  own  hoss  had  gone  lame —  \ 

'twas  the  wile  o'  that  great  old  murderer,  Satan,  says  he,  but  i 

the  Almoighty  sent  you  to  confound  his  knavish  tricks.     That  \ 

was  a  man  of  God,  my  lad,  never  out  of  heart,  roighteous  and  i 

bold  as  a  lion,  would  preach  even  in  front  of  a  gin-shop  where  ■ 

'twas  writ  up  :    ^  Drunk  a  penny,  dead-drunk  twopence,  clean  '\ 

straw  for  nawthen.'     Pounded  glass  mixed  with  mud  the  sons  '^. 

of  Belial  threw  in  his  face,  but  his  eye-soight  was  not  diramed,  \ 

nor  his  nat'ral  force  abated.     Used  to  preach  as  much  as  foive  \ 

times  a  day,  gittin'  up  at  fower  o'  the  clock,  and  travellin'  a  \ 

bigger  round  than  me,  but  wunnerful  healthy,  slept  like  a  baby  j 

in  my  cart,  and  that  saintly  he  said  all  his  life  he'd  never  done  - 

naught  as  'ud  bear  lookin'  at.     He  made  me  sing  a  hume  with  < 

him  and  we  was  singin'  it  as  we  come  into  Babylon  :  \ 

I 
Oi  the  chief  of  sinners  am,  \ 

But  Jesus  died  for  meP  | 


i82  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

As  the  sepulchral  bass  quavered  out  the  tune,  Jinny's  fresh 
voice  could  be  heard  from  the  back  door  calling  "  Gran'fer ! 
Gran'fer  !     Where  are  you  ?  " 

"  She  thinks  Oi'm  out  in  the  rine,"  chuckled  the  old  man,  "  but 
let  her  come  and  find  me.  His  blessin'  he  gave  me  at  partin', 
did  John  Wesley,  and  do  ye  don't  never  smoke  nor  drink  that 
pison  stuff,  tay,  says  he.  '  Oi'U  promise  ye  tay  and  gin  too,'  says 
Oi,  bein'  as  Oi  liked  beer  best.  '  But  to  give  up  baccy,  that's 
main  hard,'  Oi  says.  '  There's  harder,'  says  he,  lightning-like. 
'  Promise  me  as  ye  won't  be  friends  with  a  woman  as  is  younger 
than  your  wife,  for  there's  unhowly  sperrits  about,'  says  he,  '  as 
brings  gales  and  earthquakes  and  tempitations,  and  the  best  o' 
men  may  git  capsoized  same  as  the  Royal  George,  our  best  ship, 
t'other  year.'  Lord,  that  fair  capsoized  me,  for  how  could  this 
furrin  ole  gen'leman  in  his  eighties  know  about  Annie,  as  wasn't 
seventeen  yet  for  all  her  wunnerful  fine  buzzom,  and  the  missus 
older  than  me,  in  looks  Oi  mean,  bein'  as  she  was  two  years 
younger  the  fust  time  that  worritin'  census  paper  come  along." 

"  When  was  that  ?  " 

"  That  would  be  the  year  Oi  put  new  thatch  on  this  wery 
barn  for  the  new  century." 

"  And  what  year  did  you  meet  John  Wesley  ?  " 

"  Ye'd  best  git  Jinny  to  work  that  out.  But  it  couldn't  be 
many  year  afore  the  Jew  Mendoza  boxed  Dick  Humphreys  for 
the  Championship,  for  Oi  wouldn't  goo,  ne  yet  bet  on  it,  bein'  as 
my  sowl  was  saved,  and  when  Oi  lifted  up  my  woice  at  the 
camp-meetin's  and  chapels  in  praise  and  repentance  and  shouted 
'  Glory !  Glory !  '  dancin'-like,  with  the  tears  for  my  sins 
runnin'  down  my  cheeks,  that  was  more  joy  to  me  than  Annie 
and  the  prize-ring  and  cock-foightin'  rolled  into  one.  And  Oi 
ain't  never  backslided,  praise  the  Lord,  bein'  as  Annie  married  a 
sedan-chair  man  and  was  hiked  away  to  Cowchester,  and  Oi  hope 
for  your  immortal  sowl's  sake,  my  lad,  you  bain't  like  what  Oi 
was  at  your  age." 

"  I  hope  so,"  said  Will,  not  without  uneasiness. 

The  patriarch  shook  his  head.  "  There's  the  old  Adam  in  you, 
plain  to  discern.  Ye  won't  be  safe  till  ye're  married.  But  do 
ye  don't  marry  an  old  gander  of  a  widow  like  that  potboy  they 
should  be  tellin'  of," — he  began  to  cackle — "  that'll  onny  lead  to 
wuss  mischief.  Wait  till  you  happen  on  a  clean  little  lass,  rosy 
and  untapped." 


WILL  AT  HOME  183 

"  A  girl  like  your  granddaughter,  you  mean  ?  "  Will  heard 
himself  saying. 

The  cackle  ceased  abruptly  and  the  grin  was  replaced  by  a 
glare.  "  That  ain't  gooin'  to  be  married  !  That's  got  to  goo 
out  with  my  cart,  whenever  Oi'm  too  busy  workin'.  Ef  a  rich 
man  like  Farmer  Gale  as  drives  her  to  chapel  Sundays  should  be 
wantin'  her  all  the  week,  Oi  don't  say  Oi  wouldn't  goo  with  her 
to  the  big  house,  but  that  ain't  likely,  and  she  can't  have  nawthen 
to  say  to  a  roUin'  stone  as  mebbe  left  a  pack  o'  wives  among 
they  Mormons." 

Will  was  nettled.  "  And  who  asked  for  your  granddaughter  ?  " 
he  retorted.  "  Besides,  you're  quite  right.  I  married  dozens  of 
wives  in  America — all  widows  too  !  " 

The  veteran  chuckled  afresh.  "  Dash  my  buttons  !  How  you 
do  mind  me  o'  your  feyther  when  he  was  your  age — always  had 
his  little  joke.  Not  that  Oi  count  him  growed  up  yet,  he  havin' 
never  cut  his  wisdom  teeth,  but  gooin'  off  as  skittish  as  a  colt 
arter  peculiar  doctrines  and  seducin'  sperrits." 

"  Oh,  there  you  are,  Gran'fer  !  "  And  pat  as  to  a  cue  a  most 
"  seducin'  sperrit  "  flashed,  like  a  shaft  of  sunshine,  through 
the  half-open  door  into  the  gloomy  old  barn.  But  she  was 
aproned  and  bare-armed  to  the  elbow,  and  rain-spotted,  and  a 
ringlet  of  hair  was  blown  almost  across  her  mouth,  and  the 
instant  she  perceived  Will,  she  drew  back  in  confusion,  patting 
her  hair  tidy. 

"  Sorry,  Gran'fer.     I  didn't  know  you  had  visitors." 

But  Will,  to  whom  the  sense  she  conveyed  of  brooms  and 
dusters  was  sweetly  reassuring  of  a  still  unsubmerged  femininity, 
cried  out  as  hastily  : 

"  No,  I  was  just  going.     You'll  get  drowned." 

And  he  tried  to  pass  her. 

But  the  old  man  dramatically  extended  the  uncocked  hat. 

"  Howd  hard,  sonny." 

Will,  disconcerted,  found  his  feet  sticking  to  the  floor. 

"  He's  writ  me  a  letter,  imperent  little  Willie,  and  brought  it 
hisself."  Then  a  flash  of  amusement  toned  down  the  asperity. 
"  Aldoe  he  had  his  tongue  with  him !  "  And  the  old  man 
chuckled. 

"  Shall  I  read  it  ?  "  murmured  Jinny,  putting  forth  her  hand. 

"  Nay,  nay  !  "  .He  snatched  the  note  back  and  tore  it  into 
careful  pieces.     "  Ain't  fit  to  be  seen." 


i84  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  No  more  am  I,"  said  Jinny  with  an  uneasy  laugh,  and  again 
she  essayed  to  escape. 

"  Stop  !  "  commanded  the  ancient,  kindled  afresh.  "  Willie's 
got  to  tell  you  what's  in  they  scraps." 

Will  was  silejit. 

"  Don't  stand  gawmin'.     Out  with  the  abomination." 

But  no  sound  issued  from  the  young  man's  lips.  It  was  not 
merely  that  this  new  housemaidenly  figure  seemed  safe  enough 
even  in  Chelmsford,  wrapped  in  its  own  sweet  domesticity,  and 
that  adjurations  designed  for  the  minx  bade  fair  to  blunt  them- 
selves against  this  sober  angelhood  ;  but  that  the  girl's  radiance 
against  the  littered  gloom  within  and  the  rainfall  without,  robbed 
him  literally  of  breath. 

"  Speak  out,  Willie  !  "  said  the  Gaffer,  softened  to  contempt 
by  his  obvious  confusion. 

"  Perhaps  he  hasri't  brought  his  tongue,"  suggested  Jinny, 
recovering  herself. 

"  Then  Oi'U  lend  him  mine.  You  ain't  to  goo  to  Che'msford, 
he  says." 

"  But  I  don't  want  to  go  to  Chelmsford,  Gran'fer.  Why 
should  I  go  to  Chelmsford  ?  " 

"  To  get  his  horn,  you  baggage.     And  he  don't  be  wantin'  it." 

"  Oh,  but  he  ordered  it — it's  too  late  now." 

"  Ay,"  said  Daniel  Quarles,  "  and  goo  you  shall  to  git  it  ef 
the  adder  has  to  bite  Methusalem's  heels." 

"  But  I  don't  have  to  go  to  Chelmsford  for  it !  " 

"  You  said  you'd  go  to  Chelmsford,"  burst  out  Will  at  last. 

"  Nothing  of  the  so^t." 

"  But  I've  got  your  letter  !  "  He  pulled  it  out,  and  again 
that  awkward  glove  fell  out.  "  Ah,  there's  your  glove  I've 
found  on  the  road,"  he  said,  crimsoning  furiously. 

"  Thank  you  !  "  She  took  both  letter  and  glove  placidly. 
"  Now  I  shall  have  two  pairs  !  But  where  do  I  say  anything 
about  going  to  Chelmsford  ?  " 

Thus  invited,  he  came  and  looked  down  at  the  paper  she  held, 
and  gripped  an  end  of  it  himself,  very  conscious  of  her  near 
fingers,  and  her  bared  arm,  and  her  bending  head.  He  was 
about  to  cry  :  "  Why,  there  !  "  when  a  horrible  doubt  lest "  super- 
scribe "  did  not  mean  dashing  away,  or  stampeding,  or  scurrying, 
or  driving,  or  even  going,  checked  the  exclamation. 

"  I  must  ha'  misread  it,"  he  said.     "  I  beg  your  pardon." 


WILL  AT  HOME  185 

"  Spoken  like  a  Christian  !  "  said  the  Gaffer.  "  And  Oi  count 
John  Wesley  'ud  a  said  let  bygones  be  bygones.  Sow  bring  out 
the  beer,  Jinny." 

"  Thank  you — I'm  afraid  I  can't  stay,"  said  Will.  He  had  a 
sullen  sense  of  defeat,  which  the  loss  of  .the  glove  seemed  to 
accentuate  and  symbolize.  "  My  folks'll  expect  me  home  to 
tea." 

"  Your  Mormon  wives  ?  Ay,  Jinny,  you  may  well  blush,'* 
the  Gaffer  chuckled.  "  Willie's  been  and  married  a  pack  o' 
widows  in  America." 

"  And  left  them  there  !  "  said  Will,  permitting  himself  a  faint 
smile. 

"  Left  all  those  widows  !  "  laughed  Jinny.  "  How  deadly  dead 
you  must  be  !  " 

But  despite  the  merriment  in  which  the  episode  had  so  unex- 
pectedly ended,  and  despite  the  rain  which  had  now  grown 
torrential,  he  tore  himself  obstinately  away,  even  refusing  the 
"  umberella  "  which  the  old  man  suggested  and  Jinny  offered 
to  fetch  ;  though  as  he  stepped  under  the  plashing  apple-boughs, 
he  felt  himself  doubly  foolish  to  refuse  what  would  have  been  a 
literal  handle  for  a  return  visit.  And  now  that  he  had  caught 
a  glimpse  of  w^hat  he  told  himself  was  the  real  Jinny,  not  the 
Tuesday  and  Friday  sw^ashbuckler,  but  the  Saturday-cleaning-up- 
for-Sunday  house-angel,  he  did  not  despair  of  inducing  her  to 
shed  these  husks  of  bravado.  But  he  had  said  "  no,"  and  "  no  " 
to  his  great  annoyance  it  must  be. 

"  When  do  you  propose  to  superscribe  ?  "  he  asked  with  crafty 
lightness,  as  he  raised  his  hat. 

"  Oh,  but  I  have  superscribed,"  said  Jinny.  "  But  of  course 
if  it  doesn't  come  soon,  I  shall  write  over  to  Chelmsford  again." 


VII 

The  first  Sunday  of  Will's  home-coming,  nothing  had  been  said 
about  chapel.  That,  his  elders  thought,  might  be  still  a  sore 
subject  with  the  boy^whose  resentment  at  sacrificing  his  buttons 
on  the  altar  had  driven  him  "  furrin."  Still  more  deHcate  was 
the  theological  position  into  which  the  couple  themselves  had 
gradually  drifted,  and  of  which  they  now — before  a  spectator 
and  critic — grew  uneasily  conscious,  Martha's  Ecclesia  in  Long 
Bradmarsh  having  collapsed  almost  as  soon  as  she  had  been 


i86  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

converted  to  it,  she  had  no  meeting-house  to  go  to,  and,  almost 
simultaneously,  Caleb,  whose  farm-wagons  had  recently  been 
shifted  to  the  new  "  looker's  "  headquarters,  ceased  to  attend 
his  Chips  tone  Chapel.  This  was  partly  to  keep  his  wife  company 
of  a  Sunday,  partly  because  so  many  miles  there  and  back  was 
getting  too  much  for  his  legs.  In  consequence  the  pair  had 
arrived  by  compromise  at  a  Sunday  ritual  of  their  own,  a  sort  of 
Peculiar  Christadelphianism^  and  Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  who  never 
entered  any  of  the  many  hquses  of  God — it  was  popularly 
supposed  he  would  not  or  could  not  remove  his  gay-stringed 
beaver — would  often  loiter  outside  Frog  Farm  in  Church  hours, 
listening  to  their  loudly  trolled  and  hybrid  hymnology  in  a  sort 
of  pious  eavesdropping.  That  was  Uncle  Lilliwhyte' s  individual 
contribution  to  the  chaos  of  creeds  that  reigned  in  Bradmarsh. 

But  even  this  minimum  of  religion  was  denied  the  honest  snake- 
seller  when  Will  returned.  The  first  Sunday,  Caleb  and  Martha 
held  their  services  furtively  in  their  hermetically  sealed  bedroom, 
hardly  daring  to  hum  what  they  had  so  lustily  intoned  :  by  a 
common  instinct  they  shrank  from  obtruding  their  departure 
from  that  straitness  of  doctrine  in  which  Will  had  been  reared. 
They  were  indeed  secretly  relieved  that  he  made  no  reference  to 
religion,  nor  seemed  to  expect  them  to  go  to  the  old  chapel,  nor 
even  noted  the  Sundayness  of  the  dishes  that  Martha  served 
up  with  the  same  careful  everyday  air  with  which  Caleb  con- 
sumed them.  They  were  equally  relieved,  however,  that  he 
did  not  go  out  rabbiting  on  the  holy  day  with  his  new  pet 
ferrets.  "  Oi've  known  some  as  dedn't  consider  that  work," 
said  Caleb,  as  they  discussed  this  dread  possibility.  "  But  to 
my  thinkin',  if  ye  goo  out  with  a  spade,  ye  might  as  well  be 
ploughin'." 

That  was  what  they  said  in  bed  on  the  first  Saturday  night. 
Very  different  was  their  conversation  on  the  eve  of  the  next 
Sunday.  The  problems  all  came  now  from  Will's  over-interest 
in  religion.  True,  the  Sabbatarian  peril  had  not  yet  materialized  : 
he  had  neither  worn  his  best  clothes  on  the  Saturday  nor  de- 
manded priority  in  the  Sabbath  dishes.  But  he  had  dropped 
more  than  one  perturbing  remark.  Old  Quarles,  he  supposed, 
was  now  too  old  to  worship  at  his  Wesleyan  Chapel  in  Long 
Bradmarsh,  to  which  Caleb  had  replied  naively  :  "  Ay,  he  sleeps 
at  home  Sunday  mornings."  Presumably,  then.  Jinny  would  not 
leave  the  old  man  alone  on  Sunday  as  well  as  on  Tuesday  and 


WILL  AT  HOME  187 

Friday  :    to  which  Caleb  had  answered  cautiously — and  without 
admitting   that  his   observations    were    not    up    to   date — that 
doubtless  Jinny  could  only  worship  occasionally  with  the  Peculiars 
and  it  depended  on  her  getting  a  lift,  Methusalem  being  a  strict 
Sunday  observer.     Yes,  he  had  heard  Farmer  Gale  sometimes 
gave  her  a  lift — who  had  told  Willie  ?    he  wondered — but  he 
supposed  it  was  because  the  farmer,  like  her  grandfather,  was  a 
Wesleyan.     Later,  Will  had  remarked  casually  to  his  mother 
that  he  didn't  suppose  Miss  Quarles  would  be  able  to  get  to 
chapel  on  the  morrow,  as  he  had  happened  on  her  old  grand- 
father,  who   seemed   quite   breaking  up.     Martha,    murmuring 
sympathetically  that  Mr.  Quarles  must  be  getting  old,  was  like- 
wise compelled  to  gloss  over  her  inacquaintance  with  Jinny's 
latest   Sunday  habits  :     she  shocked   and  surprised  herself  by 
remarking  that  one's   grandfather  would   hardly  count  against 
Farmer  Gale,  and  hastened  to  add — especially  as  Will  seemed 
shocked  too — that  such  was  Jinny's  devotion  to  her  grandfather 
that  not  for  some  years  had  she  been  able  to  stay  longer  than  the 
Morning  Service.     Rejoiced  though  the  old  woman  was  at  Will's 
mingled  concern  for  the  religion  of  the  young  and  the  weal  of 
the  old,  she  was  a  little  uneasy  at  this  personal  turn  of  his  theo- 
logical thinking,  and  she  quickly  changed  the  conversation  to 
the  Great  Horn  and  the  Beast,  a  discussion  which  in  her  eagerness 
she  hardly  noticed  was  practically  a  monologue. 

By  nightfall  that  Saturday  Caleb  had  gathered,  with  a  sinking 
of  the  heart,  that  Will  designed  to  accompany  his  elders  on  the 
morrow — and  to  Early  Service  !  The  boy  had  apparently  failed 
to  remark  the  breach  in  the  old  chapel  routine  the  previous 
Sabbath  :  the  Sunday  had  been  hushed  up  only  too  successfully. 
It  was  as  far  as  Caleb  dared  go,  in  the  first  plunge  of  confession,  to 
say  that,  in  the  absence  of  a  vehicle.  Early  Service  at  Chips  tone 
was  out  of  the  question  nowadays. 

Such  was  the  situation  that  faced  the  old  couple  in  the  sleepless 
watches  of  the  second  Saturday  night,  and  dimmed  even  Martha's 
joy  in  the  prodigal's  return  to  religion. 

"  Best  go  with  him,  like  when  he  was  little,"  she  decided.  *'  We 
mustn't  unsettle  him  so  soon,  now  he's  found  God  again." 

"  Ain't  so  sure  he's  found  God,"  said  Caleb  shrewdly.  "  God 
ain't  in  a  goose-quill,  and  writin'  a  piece  about  Daniel  ain't  the 
road  to  heaven,  else  where  would  me  and  most  o'  the  Brethren 
be  ?     To  my  thinkin'  Will's  onny  lost  the  Devil." 


i88  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  It's  the  same  thing.  What  else  does  he  want  to  go  to 
chapel  for,  and  Early  Service  at  that  ?  " 

"  To  make  trouble,"  said  Caleb  fretfully.  "  We  was  all  so 
happy  till  he  come — and  you  had  Maria." 

"  Oh,  Caleb,  you  don't  deserve  the  Lord  should  give  him  back 
to  you  !  And  if  you  don't  go  to-morrow,  I'll  withdraw  from 
you." 

"  That  ain't  right,"  said  poor  Caleb,  puzzled  by  the  unscrupu- 
lous threat.  "  But  ef  it's  onny  for  Morning  Sarvice  he'll  expect 
you  to  goo  too." 

''  He  knows  about  my  rheumatics,  dear  heart,"  she  said 
casuistically.  ''  He  knows  I  couldn't  walk  even  to  get  my 
bonnet  cleaned." 

"  But  ef  you  were  to  tell  him  about  the  New  Jerusalem ?  " 

"He'd  best  find  that  himself,  now. he's  on  the  way.  It's  not 
far  from  Daniel." 

vni 

Thus  it  was  that  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  was  again  defrauded  of  his 
ritual  and  that  after  a  still  more  furtive  and  still  earlier  service 
in  the  sanctity  of  their  airless  bedroom,  with  hymns  muted  and 
prayers  guiltily  whispered,  the  couple  appeared  at  an  eight 
o'clock  breakfast  with  an  air  of  devotions  unpaid,  and  Caleb, 
hurrying  the  meal,  remarked  that  'twas  time  to  get  ready  for 
chapel  or  they  would  miss  even  the  Morning  Service. 

At  this,  Will,  who  was  in  his  fashionable  London  jacket — to 
the  admiring  awe  of  his  elders — sprang  up,  and  rushing  to  the 
back  of  the  house  near  the  water-barrel,  brushed  away  hastily 
at  a  dull  speck  on  his  boot  where  a  spurt  from  the  boiling  kettle 
had  blotted  out  the  shine  he  had  so  laboriously  imparted.  The 
male  ferret,  caged  just  above  his  stooping  head,  awoke  at  the 
agitation,  and  started  rubbing  itself  under  the  neck  as  if  in 
parody,  but  far  more  swiftly  and  persistently  ;  then  it  jerked 
its  nose  and  its  thin  whiskers  through  the  wires. 

"  Not  to-day,"  laughed  Will,  jabbing  its  nose  with  the  blacking- 
brush.  He  felt  very  gentlemanly  and  happy,  for  the  brief  rain 
of  the  evening  before  had  dried  up,  and  the  day  was  as  fine  as 
his  clothes.  As  Caleb  came  out  in  quest  of  Will,  the  ferret  was 
just  snuggling  back  to  slumber,  and  the  old  man,  yawning  with 
the  loss  of  his  Sunday  morning  sleep,  looked  enviously  at  the 
creature  coiling  itself  so  voluptuously  in  its  straw. 


WILL  AT  HOME  189 

"  Lucky  Jinny  brought  me  sech  a  noice  Sunday  neckercher," 
he  said,  "  or  Oi'd  ha'  been  ashamed  to  walk  with  ye.  Ye  look 
like  our  Member  o'  Parlyment."  He  himself  looked,  however,  a 
respectable  figure  enough  in  his  tall  hat  and  finely  stitched  and 
patterned  Sunday  smock,  his  high-lows  and  gaiters,  and  it  was 
not  till  they  were  getting  over  the  stile  that  led  to  the  short  cut 
through  the  Green  Lane  that  Will  observed  that  his  senior 
carried,  like  a  tramp,  a  bundle  in  his  handkerchief. 

"  What's  that  ?  "  he  inquired  fretfully,  becoming  aware  too 
that  the  Green  Lane,  even  at  its  best,  offered  perils  to  his  boot- 
polish. 

"  That's  my  hume-book  and  our  dinner  and  tea.  There's  two 
packets  for  each  on  us,  and  we  must  be  home  for  supper.  Don't, 
your  poor  mother  will  be  lonely." 

Will  had  forgotten  these  meals  :  they  had,  in  his  boyhood, 
been  carried  decorously  in  the  wagon.  But  the  sunshine  of  the 
mid-May  morning  did  not  permit  ill-humours,  and  they  strode 
happily  along  the  dappled  by-ways,  bounding  over  the  shrunken 
sloughs,  the  son  uplifted  even  beyond  boot-polish  by  the  intoxica- 
tion of  the  Spring,  and  the  father  by  the  intoxication  of  the 
Spirit.  For,  the  moment  Caleb  had  crossed  the  stile,  the  old 
rapture  of  fellow-worship  had  returned,  and  the  absence  of 
Martha  seemed  to  lift  the  shadow  of  her  criticism  ;  while  doubts 
of  his  son's  regeneration  could  hardly  survive  the  sight  of  his 
springy  step  chapelwards. 

Will  was  indeed  living  over  again  his  childish  memories  of 
these  Sunday  journeys,  and,  somewhat  to  his  surprise,  something 
fresh  and  delicious  seemed  to  emanate  from  them.  It  had  after 
all  been  a  pleasant  change  in  the  weekly  round,  this  family  jaunt 
with  the  big  double-lidded  provision  basket,  while  the  congrega- 
tional picnicking  in  the  chapel  had  not  been  without  its  jollity. 

But  Caleb  did  not  leave  him  long  to  his  memories.  The  old 
Peculiar  was  anxious  to  have  a  problem  solved  that  had  been 
weighing  upon  him  these  two  years.  In  the  New  Jerusalem, 
whose  descent  to  earth — ready-made  and  complete — was,  accord- 
ing to  Martha,  imminent,  to  the  impending  confusion  of  dis- 
believers, there  was  to  be  "  A  street  of  pure  gold,  as  it  were 
transparent  glass."  Martha — as  if  to  immunize  him  against  his 
visit  to  the  old  Peculiar  Meeting-house — had  read  out  the  text 
that  very  morning  at  their  surreptitious  service.  And  his  ear 
had  always  heard  '^  brass  "  instead  of  "  glass."     But  how  could 


190  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

gold  be  brass  or  either  transparent  ?  He  did  not  like  to  shock 
her  by  questioning  the  letter  of  a  text — his  differences  from  her 
turned  merely  on  the  relative  importance  and  significance  of 
her  texts  as  compared  with  those  he  had  picked  up  from  the 
Peculiars.  Yet  this  puzzle  was  perhaps  what  really  prevented 
him  making  the  final  plunge  into  Christ adelphianism.  It  is 
true  he  might  have  demanded  her  solution  of  it — often  through 
those  long  months  of  controversy  as  he  looked  at  her  saintly  face 
so  quiet  on  the  pillow  beside  him,  it  was  borne  in  upon  him  that 
in  that  bookish  brain,  under  that  frilled  cotton  nightcap,  lay  the 
explanation  of  the  holy  mystery.  But  possibly,  with  the  subter- 
ranean obstinacy  of  the  peasant,  he  shrank  from  an  elucidation 
which  might  have  left  him  irremediably  at  her  mercy.  A  vindica- 
tion of  the  text  by  Will,  on  the  other  hand,  would  give  him  time  to 
turn  round,  take  his  new  bearings.  And  a  young  man  who  was 
capable  of  composing  a  thesis  upon  the  Little.  Horn  and  the 
Great  Horn,  could  surely  wrestle  with  this  mystery. 

"  Oi  hear  you  writ  a  piece  about  Daniel,"  he  began  tactfully,  as 
they  crossed  the  bridge. 

Will  frowned.  He  had  forgotten  Martha's  misunderstanding. 
"  Has  he  been  round  telling  you  ?  "  he  asked  angrily. 

"  Me  !  "     Caleb  stared.     "  Oi  bain't  howly  enough  for  wisions." 

Will  was  puzzled  in  his  turn.    "  You  mean  he  can^t  walk  so  far  !  " 

"  Oi  wouldn't  say  that  :   happen  he  can  fly  if  he  wants  to.'' 

"  Fly  !  " 

"  Surely  !     A  man  so  howly  in  his  life — him  what " 

Dead  !  So  suddenly  !  Will  stood  still.  This  altered  many 
things.  The  winged  image  of  the  Gaffer  faded  before  the  picture 
of  a  lonely  Jinny.     "  When  did  he  die  ?  " 

"  You  know  that  better  than  me,"  said  Caleb  meekly. 

At  this  the  thought  that  his  "  epistle  "  had  over-excited  the 
patriarch  and  stilled  that  aged  heart,  shot  up,  agitating  the  young 
man.  That  was  why  relief  mingled  with  a  vague  disappointment 
when  Caleb  went  on  :  "  They  lions  couldn't  kill  him,  but  Oi 
reckon  he  had  to  die  some  time.  But  many  of  them  what  sleep 
in  the  dust  of  the  earth  shall  awake,  he  tells  us,  and  maybe  " — he 
added  with  a  flash — "  they'll  wake  up  in  that  golden  city." 

Will  grunted  a  vague  "  Maybe." 

"  Touching  that  there  city,"  said  Caleb,  "  the  gold  of  the  street 
thereof  will  be  transparent." 

"  I  know,"  murmured  Will,  suppressing  a  yawn. 


WILL  AT  HOME  191 

He  knew  !  And  the  contradiction  did  not  strike  him  1  In- 
stantly, as  by  another  flash,  the  text  solved  itself  in  the  old 
man's  mind — gold  in  those  millennial  days,  while  it  retained  its 
sacred  splendour  would  also  lose  its  gross  opaqueness,  becoming 
rarefied,  disembodied,  spiritualized,  so  that  gold  was  as  brass 
since  both  were  like  glass,  making  thus  a  harmony  of  light  with 
the  jasper  wall,  clear  as  crystal,  and  the  twelve  giant  pearls  of 
the  gates. 

"  It'll  be  a  pritty  sight !  "  he  mused  aloud. 

"  Yes,  like  the  Crystal  Palace,"  sneered  Will. 

"  You  seen  that  ?  "  asked  Caleb  eagerly. 

"  A  man  couldn't  be  in  London  and  escape  seeing  it,"  said 
Will.  "  Every  cad  drags  you  into  his  omnibus  bound  for  Hyde 
Park.     Such  a  crowed  !  " 

"  Yes,  the  chimney-sweep  got  his  pocket  picked,  Bundock's 
buoy-oy  was  a-tellin',"  said  Caleb,  "  but  the  streets  thereof,  be 
they  of  gold  ?  " 

"  The  streets  of  London  ?  "  said  Will,  smiling. 

"  Noa,  the  streets  of  the  Crystal  City  ?  " 

"  No,  of  course  not,  father." 

"  Then  they  can't  be  brass  neither  ?  " 

"  More  like  grass,"  Will  laughed.  "  For  there's  real  trees  left 
standing  inside." 

Caleb  joined  in  the  boy's  laugh.  Though  he  had  never  really 
believed  that  the  Crystal  Palace  represented  the  Millennial  City, 
it  was  well  to  have  the  danger  finally  cleared  away.  And, 
abandoning  the  gold-brass  puzzle,  his  mind  flew  back  illogically 
but  passionately  to  his  Peculiar  Brethren  and  the  joy  of  the 
awaiting  ritual. 

"  Ah,  here's  Plashy  Hall !  "  said  Will.  "  And  the  dog  seems 
having  his  Sunday  nap."  He  threw  open  the  white  gate  marked 
"  No  thoroughfare  !  " 

"  But  that's  closed." 

"  Closed  !  "  said  Will  in  fiery  accents.  "  I  shan't  even  close 
it  after  us." 

"  I  count  they  won't  mind  you  in  vour  Parlvment  coat, 
but " 

"  Go  along,  dad."  And  Will  pushed  the  old  man  into  Plashy 
Walk  and  strode  forward  like  a  village  Hampden.  Within  a 
minute  he  missed  Caleb,  and  looking  back,  saw  him  hurrying 
back  from  the  gate. 


192  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Must  alius  shut  ga-aites  !  "  he  apologized  with  his  rising 
accent. 

"  I'll  burn  it  next  time,"  said  Will.  "  Why,  this  saves  us  a 
mile." 

"  But  v/e'U  miss  the  Early  Sarvicers,"  complained  Caleb. 
"  You've  forgot  how  they  walk  out  to  meet  the  Brethren,  what 
come  footin'  it  from  afar,  and  have  an  extry  sarvice  at  a  half-way 
house  back  o'  Long  Bradmarsh." 

"  Surely  the  regular  services  will  be  enough." 

"  But  'tis  noice  to  git  an  extry  snack,"  said  Caleb  wistfully. 
"  Many's  the  Sunday  Oi've  had  foive  sarvices."  He  sighed 
voluptuously. 

"  Well,  better  luck  next  time,"  said  Will  lightly. 

The  tone  was  not  unkindly,  but  Caleb  took  it  in  full  earnest, 
and  his  long  secret  grievance  against  Martha  began  to  ooze  into 
speech  under  the  spell  of  his  son's  sympathy.  Her  warning  against 
unsettling  the  boy  was  forgotten  in  this  natural  gravitation  of 
male  to  male  against  female  fantasy. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I've  alius  been  fast  and  faithful  all  along. 
'Tis  mother  that's  alius  gooin'  forrard.  And  woundily  wilful — Oi 
never  met  nobody  loike  her,  barrin'  old  Quarles.  When  we 
married  we  was  both  Sprinklers,  but  scarcely  had  we  got  six 
childer  afore  she  says  she  must  be  baptoized.  Wait  till  the 
summer,  says  Oi,  for  'twas  a  black  Feb'ary,  But  no — sow 
headlong  is  her  natur'  they  had  to  break  the  ice.  She  give  a 
deep  soigh  when  the  water  took  her — it  a'most  unhinged  me. 
But  she  would  have  it  she  felt  sow  happy  and  contented.  She 
drilled  me  hard  to  make  me  take  the  total  immersion  too — 
'nation  obstinate  is  mother,  but  Oi've  alius  stood  out  stubborn 
for  the  Truth.     Fast  and  faithful,"  he  repeated,  as  if  to  reassure 

himself,  p.-- :.|fe:..Ty=i^"t^ -^ 

"  Well,  but  you  changed  too  !  "  Will  reminded  him  less  kindly. 
"  You  weren't  born  a  Faith-Healer." 

"  That  ain't  my  fault,  bein'  as  the  truth  wasn't  found  out  in 
my  young  days,  though  they  warses  o'  Jeames  was  there  all  the 
time.  But  the  fust  day  Oi  met  the  Brethren  Oi  knowed  they 
were  the  people  for  me.  There  was  one  on  'em  among  my  own 
labourers.  When  Oi  said  as  we  didn't  know  'zactly  what  God 
was,  he  said,  says  he  :  *  God's  like  you  and  me,  bein'  as  He  made 
man  in  His  own  image.'  That  was  an  eye-opener  to  me.  But 
the  others  parsecuted  him  and  called  him  Brother  Jerusalem  as 


WILL  AT  HOME  193 

a  rewoilin'  word.  He  had  a  fork  to  pitch  a  high  load — cost 
foive  shillin's,  fancy  what  a  good  fork  that  must  ha'  been — and 
they  went  and  broke  it.  Oi  was  grieved,  but  naught  grieved 
him  except  to  grieve  the  Lord.  He  dedn't  drink  neither,  and 
you  look  so  odd  if  you  don't  drink.  But  when  they  wanted  to 
stand  treat,  he  said  he'd  take  bread  and  cheese.  *  Goo  to  hell,' 
says  they.  '  There  ain't  no  hell,  even  for  you,'  he  answers  soft ; 
'  you'll  be  in  the  same  darkness  as  now,  that's  all.'  That  was 
another  eye-opener.  Oi  was  taken  with  that  hell — not  bright 
and  burnin',  but  all  black  and  cowld — so  Oi  came  out  o'  my 
darkness  and  jined  the  Brethren,  and  gave  up  beer,  barrin' 
harvest-time,  which  rejoiced  mother  and  was  money  saved  for 
the  childer.  Be-yu-tiful  things  were  brought  to  pass  and  be- 
)ai-tiful  things  were  said  the  day  Oi  went  to  my  fust  sarvice, 
and  ef  the  Lord  is  with  you  to-day  when  you  speak  o'  your 
experiences,  Oi  count  be-yu-tiful  things  will  be  brought  out 
agen." 

Will  shuddered.  He  stopped  abruptly  and  was  nigh  turning 
back.  He  had  forgotten  that  the  Brethren  would  expect  his 
soul-experiences  and  confessions — especially  after  this  spacious 
and  adventurous  interval. 

"  What's-a-matter  ?  "  asked  Caleb. 

"  Nothing,  nothing,"  he  said,  remembering  his  own  power  of 
sullen  silence.  And  to  say  something,  he  asked,  as  he  walked 
on  :   "  And  what's  wrong  with  mother  now  ?  " 

"  Wrong  ?  "  Caleb  was  shocked  at  this  crude  interpretation. 
"  Oi  don't  be  meanin'  she  ain't  in  her  rights  to  hunt  out  new- 
texts,  she  bein'  a  scholard.  There  was  alius  a  bran-span-new 
one,  Oi  mind  me,  the  Sundays  I  used  to  goo  a-courtin'  her.  A 
wery  long  way  she  lived — they  talk  broad  and  careless  where 
she  comes  from,  not  moist  and  proper  like  here — and  Oi  had  to 
git  up  early  and  goo  along  the  sea-wall — deadly  dark  and  lone- 
some it  was  winter  nights  and  mornin's,  but  her  face  was  alius 
with  me  like  the  moon." 

"  Why,  was  she  pretty  then  ?  "  asked  Will. 

"  Can't  you  see  ?  "  replied  Caleb,  with  a  faint  surprise.  "  She 
ain't  changed  much,  she  havin'  alius  the  peace  of  God  in  her 
heart." 

Will  was  touched  and  astonished  by  this  revelation  of  romance 
in  the  two  elderly  people  foisted  upon  him  as  parents,  whom  he 
had  all  his  life  taken  as  eternally  elderly.     But  still  more  surpris- 


194  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

ing  was  the  realization  forced  upon  him  that  the  rehgion  which 
to  him  was  a  bore  was  to  them  a  thrill. 

"  Shall  I  carry  the  parcel,  father  ?  "  he  asked  gently. 

"  Nay,  nay,  that  don't  goo  with  Parlyment  clothes.  And  it 
ain't  as  sizeable  as  the  box  you  carried  from  Chipstone."  He 
chuckled  in  freshly  admiring  glee. 

Passing  adown  the 'long  hawthorn  avenue,  they  now  issued 
from  Plashy  Walk,  the  rights  of  leg  vindicated,  and  soon  they 
began  to  see  signs  of  other  pilgrims  faring  towards  Chipstone, 
that  great  gathering-place  of  faiths  and  creeds. 


CHAPTER  VI 

SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE 

l^his  zealot 
Is  of  a  mongrel^  diverse  kind  ; 
Cleric  before^  and  lay  behind  ; 
A  lawless  linsey-woolsey  brother^ 
Half  of  one  order ^  half  another, 

Butler,  "  Hudibras." 


As  old  England  has  always  been  rich  in  "  characters/'  in  those 
grotesque  or  gnarled  individualities  that  have  escaped  the 
common  mould,  the  superabundance  of  ?ects,  which,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  paucity  of  sauces,  amused  Voltaire,  has  its  natural 
explanation. 

John  Bull — ^himself  a  "  character  "  among  nationalities — could 
not  long  endure  the  Papal  leading-strings,  and  ever  since  the 
days  of  Wycliffe  a  succession  of  free  spirits  has  founded 
"  heresies,"  not  a  few  based  on  misunderstood  mistranslations  of 
Greek  or  Hebrew  texts,  torn  from  their  literary  and,  above  all, 
their  historical  context.  But  why  during  these  five  centuries 
Essex  has  been  a  breeding-place  for  Nonconformity,  second  to 
no  other  county,  is  a  problem  to  tempt  the  philosopher.  For  its 
ministers  have  been  silenced  or  ejected  in  numbers  almost  un- 
paralleled ;  some  indeed  merely  for  tippling,  dicing,  carding,  and 
womanizing,  but  the  majority  for  the  more  serious  offences  of 
heresy  or  disrespect  towards  Parliament ;  while  simple  peasants 
— men,  women,  and  girls — for  their  participation  in  seditious 
conventicles  or  practices,  have  been  fined,  jailed,  transported  to 
"  His  Majesty's  plantations,"  and  even  nailed  to  stakes  and 
burnt  alive,  clapping  their  hands  the  while  with  joy.  Some  of 
the  most  moving  scenes  of  "  Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs "  and 
Bloomfield's   "  History    of    the   Martyrs "    are   laid   in    Essex. 


196  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Triumphant  descendants  of  these  opinionated  saints  were  now- 
converging  on  Chipstone  from  every  quarter  of  the  compass — it 
was  but  a  toy-model  of  a  town,  yet  it  held  in  its  petty  periphery 
chapels,  meeting-houses,  or  churches — ancient-towered  or  drably 
wooden  or  offering  the  image  of  a  tinned  congregation,  tightly 
packed — for  Baptists  (Particular  or .  General),  Quakers,  Wes- 
leyans,  Congregationalists,  Peculiars,  and  Primitive  Methodists, 
as  well  as  your  everyday  Churchgoer ;  nothing  indeed  was 
wanting  except  an  Ecclesia  for  the  variation  represented  by 
Martha.  And  as  most  of  these  structures  were  in  the  High 
Street,  or  just  off  it,  you  beheld  in  that  ancient  thoroughfare  of 
3.  Sunday  a  crowd  of  Christians,  as  like  to  the  naked  eye  as  a 
flock  of  sheep,  sorting  themselves  into  their  denominational 
pigeon-holes,  and  disappearing  as  suddenly  to  right  or  left  as 
the  pedestrians  in  "  The  Vision  of  Mirza  "  vanished  downwards 
through  the  trap-door's  in  the  bridge. 

Of  all  these  types  of  Christian  none  seemed  so  indigenous  to 
Essex  as  that  aptly  christened  ''  Peculiar  "  :  it  was  as  though 
peculiar  to  the  marshes,  an  emanation  of  the  soil.  Though  the 
first  apostolic  fervour  was  over  in  Chipstone,  and  the  spirit  was 
moving  rather  towards  Woodham  and  Southend,  the  sect  was 
still  young  and  persecuted  enough  to  be  a  devoted  brotherhood, 
as  Will  soon  realized  from  the  greetings  which  his  father  exchanged 
with  fellow-pilgrims,  who  grew  more  and  more  frequent  as  they 
drew  nigh  the  outskirts  of  the  theological  town. 

There  was,  among  others,  a  cheerful-looking  woman  pushing  a 
four-wheeled  baby-cart,  which  held  an  infant  back  and  front,  and 
a  food-parcel  sandwiched  between  them.  Caleb,  addressing  her 
as  Sister,  offered  to  wheel  it,  but  she  replied  that  the  children 
would  cry  at  a  stranger.  "  Well,  you'll  soon  be  comin'  to  your 
destiny,"  said  Caleb.  But  before  Will  and  he  had  forged  ahead 
of  her,  she  had  begun  pouring  out  a  premature  confession.  Two 
or  three  were  gathered  together,  and  the  Spirit  seemingly  blew 
through  her.  That  time  last  year  she  hadn't  trusted  the  Lord  : 
when  they  were  wheeling  the  cart  to  chapel,  she  had  wondered 
to  her  husband  how  she  could  fit  in  the  coming  baby.  And  the 
Lord  had  now  made  room  by  taking  the  prior  baby,  so  that 
she  was  well  chastised  :  moreover  they  had  "  parsecuted  "  her 
husband  before  a  magistrate  for  not  calling  in  a  doctor  for  the 
child,  but  as  it  wasn't  insured,  they  had  only  put  him  in  prison 
for  a  little.     All  the  same  he  was  "  broke  up,"  having  always 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  197 

been  a  "  forthright  "  man.  The  Lord  was  indeed  trying  him 
by  fire. 

"  Ay,  'twas  the  same,  WilHe,  when  your  brother  what's-a-name 
died,"  said  Caleb  as  they  drew  ahead  of  the  labouring  baby-cart. 
"  But  the  Brethren  now  exhort  one  another  not  to  insure  their 
childer,  Satan  being  swift  to  cry  child-murder." 

"  But  isfiH  it  child-murder  if  a  doctor  might  have  saved  it  ?  " 
asked  Will  coldly,  for  the  woman's  story  had  shocked  him. 

Caleb  looked  pained.  "  Ef  the  Lord  wouldn't  listen  even  to 
prayers,  is  it  likely  He'd  regard  doctors  ?  Howsomever  the 
Brethren  stand  fast  and  faithful — they  goo  to  prison  even  at 
harvest-time  when  you're  worth  forever  o'  money.  But  the 
Lord's  people  are  wunnerful  good  to  one  another,  and  the  Elders 
look  arter  the  families.  Oh,  what  a  joyous  Harvest  Thanksgivin' 
we  had  two  years  agoo,  time  the  martyrs  came  out  o'  their  cells. 
All  in  the  open  air  it  was,  and  Deacon  Mawhood  brought  out 
be-yu-tiful  lessons.  No  matter  you  lost  your  harvest  money,  he 
says,  you  won  the  palm  and  the  crown,  and  'tis  the  Second 
Harvest  in  the  heavenly  fields  with  angels  to  squinch  your  thirst 
from  golden  wessels  that  shall  be  yourn,  says  the  Deacon." 

Will  received  the  rat-catcher's  rhetoric  with  a  snort,  which  put 
Caleb  again  on  the  defensive. 

"  Oi've  never  took  no  medicine  for  ten  year,"  said  Caleb. 
"  And  look  at  me  !  " 

"  Well,  I've  taken  plenty,"  said  WiU.     "  And  look  at  me  !  " 

"  Oi  allow  Oi  ain't  a  a  Samson  like  you,"  admitted  Caleb 
honestly,  "  nor  couldn't  carry  a  box  that  far.  And  when  Oi  say 
no  medicine,  Oi  don't  mean  when  Oi'm  not  ill.  For  same  as 
Oi'm  well,  mother  makes  me  take  a  little  pill  afore  meals,  bein'  a 
wegeble  as  stops  the  gripes.  There  ain't  naught  about  that  in 
the  Bible,  seein'  as  the  text  starts  onny  when  you  git  sick.  And 
arter  she  lost  your  brother  Jim — or  maybe  he  was  Zecharoiah — 
she  did  fetch  a  doctor  for  the  tothers,  argufyin'  that  when 
the^  child's  too  young  to  seek  grace  of  itself,  oil  inside  ain't  no 
wuss  than  oil  outside.  And  then  they  Christy  Dolphins  come 
along " 

"  Who  are  they  ?  "  inquired  Will. 

But  Caleb  drew  up  with  a  sudden  remembrance.  "  You'll 
find  that  out  for  yourself.     They  ain't  far  from  Daniel." 

"  Live  on  the  Common,  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Noa — there   ain't   none   near   us — there  was  two  in   Long 


198  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Bradmarsh,  but  they've  gone  back  to  thec^ Joanna  prophet 
woman,  so  your  poor  mother  ain't  got — "  he  broke  off  again. 
"  Oi  don't  say  ef  mother  was  took  real  bad,  Oi  shouldn't  goo  and 
git  Doctor  Gory,  seein'  as  she  threatens  to  goo  for  him  same  as 
Oi'm  ill.  It  ain't  the  doctor,  it's  the  faith,  says  mother,  and  so 
long  as  you  don't  believe  in  the  doctor,  there  ain't  no  harm  in 
lettin'  him  thump  you  about.  So  long  as  your  heart  turns  to 
God,  says  mother,  the  doctor  can  listen  to  it  all  he  likes." 

"  Then  you  do  have  the  doctor  !  "  Will  was  amused  at  these 
compromises  exacted  by  his  masterful  mother,  whose  heretical 
evolution  after  the  loss  of  offspring  he  could,  however,  well 
understand. 

"  Noa — noa,  not  for  us — ^leastways  not  yet,"  Caleb  protested. 
"  That  was  onny  for  the  childer.     That  made  us  feel  free." 

"  Free  ?  "  Will  queried. 

"  Not  responsible  like."  He  was  somewhat  embarrassed. 
"  Faith-healin'  ain't  the  main  thing,"  he  expounded  anxiously, 
"  it's  f aith-gittin'  ;  it's  lovin'  God  and  seekin'  His  grace,  just 
as  you're  doin'  to-day." 

Will  was  silent. 

"  Bless  me  !  "  cried  Caleb  suddenly.!  "  Ef  that  don't  look 
tempesty  1  " 

Will's  eyes  went  skywards  and  found  indeed  a  livid  patch  of 
gloom,  like  a  ghastly  sag  of  sky,  suddenly  splotched  in  the  warm 
blue.     And  as  he  looked,  a  zigzag  flash  stabbed  through  it. 

"  Quick,"  cried  Caleb,  indicating  a  fairly  leafy  oak,  "  git  under 
that  tree  1  " 

"  No,  no,"  said  Will,  "  it's  dangerous."  And  a  terrible  peal 
of  thunder  accentuated  his  words. 

*'  Oi'U  hazard  it,"  said  Caleb,  hastening  towards  the  shelter. 
"  The  Lord  is  marciful — He  can  kill  us  when  He  pleases.  He 
ain't  got  no  need  o'  lightnin'.  But  that's  gooin'  to  pour  .like 
billyho — and  the  rine  falls  alike  on  the  just  and  the  unjust— 
unless  the  roighteous  man's  got  an  umberrella."  • 

Will  smiled,  though  humour  was  as  far  as  ever  from  Caleb's 
intentions.  Unwilling  to  desert  the  old  man,  and  perhaps 
weighing  the  improbability  of  an  electric  stroke  against  the 
certainty  of  spoiling  his  jacket,  and  the  last  surviving  sheen  of 
his  boots,  Will  stood  pluckily  beside  his  parent,  while,  after 
another  celestial  salvo,  great  drops  began  to  patter  on  the  leaves 
and  even  to  drip  through  them.     "  Lucky  that  thunder  dedn't 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  199 

come  in  the  middle  o'  last  night,"  mused  the  old  man  gratefully 
as  it  roared  on.  "  It's  sech  a  bother  dressin'  yourself  agen  to 
set  up  till  it  stops.  Hark  at  they  Tommy  Devils  squealin',''  he 
cried,  indicating  the  startled  swifts.  But  after  a  few  minutes 
Caleb's  patience  gave  out :  the  distant  chiming  of  Chipstone 
Church  bells,  with  which  the  way  had  been  piously  enlivened, 
was  now  chillingly  inaudible  ;  the  thought  that  they  would  be 
late  for  chapel  gnawed  at  his  heart ;  and  dryness  seemed  a  poor 
equivalent  for  those  missed  moments  of  spiritual  ecstasy.  He 
was  about  to  dash  through  the  storm,  when  the  rain  ceased  as 
suddenly  as  it  came,  the  blackbirds  began  to  whistle  and  forage 
merrily,  and  the  sun,  bursting  out  more  brilliantly  than  ever, 
soon  licked  up  the  modicum  of  moisture  that  had  percolated  to 
their  Sunday  exterior.  But  Caleb's  apprehensions  were  justified. 
He  had  overrated  the  pace  of  his  aged  legs,  and  despite  the  gain 
through  Flashy  Walk,  he  got  no  compensation  for  the  missed 
Half-Way  Service,  for  when  they  arrived  at  the  little  meeting- 
house, the  Morning  Service  proper  had  begun. 

n 

The  chapel  of  the  Peculiars  was  one  of  the  minor  religious 
edifices  that  did  not  aspire  to  the  High  Street.  Behind  an  iron 
gate  and  a  petty  stone  courtyard,  it  displayed  a  gabled  front, 
with  a  roof  of  pantiles,  and  a  row  of  dull  windows  of  an  eccle- 
siastical order  on  either  side.* 

As  Will  passed  through  the  door,  all  his  tardily  born  sympathy 
vanished,  and  a  wave  of  the  old  insufferable  boredom  smote  him 
like  a  breath  of  the  steerage  on  his  Atlantic  steamer.  Almost 
ere  his  hat  was  off,  his  eye  had  taken  in  the  whole  once-familiar 
scene,  the  painfully  crude  walls,  a  little  dingier  with  the  passing 
of  the  years,  the  broad  table-desk  at  the  head  of  the  hall,  at 
which  Deacon  Mawhood  and  the  Elders  throned  it  in  Sunday 
black,  the  rows  of  spruce  wooden  chairs  sexually  divided  by  a 
gangway,  and  exhibiting  in  its  left  section  a  desert  of  elderly 
females  with  a  few  oases  cf  hobbledehoy  girls.  He  thought  of 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  calculated  whimsically  that  if  that 
cost  twopence  to  see,  how  much  ought  one  not  to  pay  to  escape 
seeing  this  ! 

But  if  his  entry  meant  ennui  to  himself,  it  was  a  most  dramatic 
event  to  the  congregation.     At  first,  indeed,  this  stranger  in  the 


200  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

fashionable  jacket  was  not  associated  with  Caleb,  whose  return 
to  the  fold  was  a  separate  thrill.  It  was  believed  for  an  instant 
that  a  veritable  gentleman  had  succumbed  to  the  Truth,  and  even 
when  it  was  perceived  that  he  was  no  other  than  Will  Flynt,  the 
news  of  whose  home-coming  had  reached  the  majority,  the  sensa- 
tion did  not  abate,  for  was  not  God  still  visibly  with  His  peculiar 
flock,  turning  back  the  hearts  of  the  wanderers,  whether  of  the 
old  generation  or  the  young  ?  A  breath  of  new  inspiration 
shook  the  hall,  and  the  grey-haired  Brother  who  had  just  begun 
reading  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  Acts  faltered  in  his  mispro- 
nunciation of  Cyrene.  As  he  went  on  droning  out  the  chapter — 
surely  the  longest  in  the  Bible,  chosen  maliciously  to  depress  him 
further,  thought  Will — its  burden  of  the  people  of  God,  set  for 
a  light  to  the  Gentiles,  evoked  a  mounting  exaltation,  and  those 
who  had  come  with  no  thought  of  testifying,  found  themselves 
possessed  of  the  Spirit.  There  was  in  particular  a  man  with 
mutton-chop  whiskers,  on  the  bench  in  front  of  Will,  whose 
body  swayed  with  excitement,  and  who  punctuated  the  reading 
with  breathless  jerks  of  nasal  interpolation.  "  Be-yu-tiful !  " 
"  Yes  !  "  "  Amen  1  "  "  Thank  Gord  !  "  "  Mercy  !  "  and  the  like. 
And  when  at  last  the  chapter  ended  on  the  verse  "  And  the  dis- 
ciples were  filled  with  joy  and  with  the  Holy  Ghost,"  it  lifted  the 
man  to  his  feet  and  he  poured  forth  the  story  of  his  sinful  past. 

"  Oi  was  Church  of  England — in  the  choir — and  wore  black 
and  whoite  gowns — and  rang  the  bells — and  was  confirmed  and 
all — but  Gord  had  never  pardoned  my  sins." 

Will  stifled  a  yawn  and  looked  towards  the  door.  But  the 
rest  of  the  audience  hung  upon  the  tale — the  tale  of  a  death-bed 
repentance  of  Churchmanship  and  the  miraculous  recovery  to 
lead  the  better  life  of  the  Peculiar  Brotherhood. 

"  Oi  asked  the  Elder  to  howd  up  my  hands,  so  that  Oi  might 
die  praising  Gord  for  the  revelation." 

Sobs  came  from  the  left  benches,  but  they  only  fevered  Will. 
He  sat  in  a  dull  fury,  dazed  by  words  that  passed  over  his  brain 
without  leaving  a  meaning. 

"  Oh,  what  a  thronging  boy  and  boy — a  land  where  we  shall 
never  say  '  Good  noight ' — engraved  in  eternal  brass — the  Lord 
shoines  on  your  heart — sheep  and  goats — streets  paved  with  pure 
gold  as  it  were  transparent  glass  !  "  It  was  not  till  he  felt  his 
arm  clutched  by  Caleb  in  the  old  man's  excitement  at  hearing 
this  last  phrase  .that  Will  connected  such  words  with  reality  at 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  201 

all,  and  they  faded  back  into  mere  religion  till  a  sudden  mention 
of  "  John  in  the  oil  of  Patmos  "  shot  up  a  quaint  picture  of  a 
too  profuse  anointment. 

Other  speakers  followed  with  the  same  transcendental  voca- 
bulary, and  then  hymns,  in  an  interval  between  which,  the 
black-garmented  Deacon  with  a  royal  gesture,  that  seemed  to 
sweep  away  the  remotest  effluvium  of  aniseed  or  moleskins,  sent 
Will  a  hymn-book  by  a  deferentially  wriggling  Brother.  It 
seemed  an  ironic  revenge  for  the  book  he  had  flung  into  the 
bushes,  but  it  saved  him  from  the  oppressive  proximity  of  his 
father's,  which  he  had  been  sharing ;  for  the  old  man,  though  he 
could  not  read  the  book,  liked  to  hold  it  as  he  had  always  held 
it  with  Martha,  and  indeed  could  not  have  sung  without  feeling 
it  at  his  fingers'  ends.  Will  turned  its  pages  with  curiosity, 
thinking  of  Bundock's  "  village  idiot,"  and  noting  that  it  was 
still  published  by  a  village  barber.  Then  a  gaunt,  horn- 
spectacled  man  was  seized  of  the  Spirit. 

"  I've  been  looking  for  a  han'kercher,"  he  began,  to  Will's 
surprise.  "  I've  been  looking  for  a  han'kercher,"  he  repeated. 
"  I've  been  looking  for  a  han'kercher,"  he  recapitulated  with 
rising  rhetoric,  "  to  wipe  my  tears  away."  But  the  thrilling 
level  of  this  exordium  was  not  maintained,  and  the  stock  phrases 
started  again,  merciless,  unendurable,  beating  on  Will's  brain  till 
they  beat  vainly  against  the  depths  of  his  reverie — or  was  it  his 
doze  ?  Ah,  surely  that  was  Jinny's  horn  at  last  !  No,  it  was 
only  his  father  blowing  emotionally  into  his  red  cotton  handker- 
chief—too huge  to  need  looking  for — a  duplicate  of  that  which 
held  their  meals.  Besides,  Jinny  wouldn't  be  blowing  her  horn 
of  a  Sunday.  But  why  didn't  she  come  to  chapel,  the  graceless 
minx  ?  Was  she  careering  around  with  that  Farmer  Gale,  or 
was  it  her  grandfather's  illness  ? 

If  flighty  young  girls,  with  hearts  sound  at  bottom,  would 
come  here  and  unfold  the  error  of  their  independent  ways,  the 
practice  of  confession  might  be  justified,  and  chapel-service 
become  both  useful  and  exciting.  But  these  faded  people,  these 
ungainly  men  and  fubsy  females  !  Who  on  earth  cared  for  their 
drab  histories  ?  Ah,  there  was  Mother  Gander,  not  so  podgy  as 
most — in  the  blue  silk  of  auld  lang  syne — if  only  she  would  get 
up — or  even  Charley  Mott — there  would  be  some  spark  of  interest. 
But  no,  the  horn-spectacled  bore  held  the  floor  pitilessly,  and 
the  phrases  beat  on. 


202  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Be-yu-tiful,  be-yu-tiful  words — I  thought  I  should  die  ! — 
Poor  me  !     What  a  comfort  in  them  words  !  " 

And  the  nasal  voice,  its  fervour  unallayed  by  its  own  outpour- 
ing, still  punctuated  the  other  speeches  with  jerky  interpolations. 
"  Praise  the  Lord  !  "  or  "  Glory  !  "  came  with  fiery  iteration,  and 
sometimes  this  saint  with  the  mutton-chop  whiskers  said  "  Lord 
bless  me !  "  or  "  Lord  bless  my  soul ! "  and  these  frayed  and  almost 
meaningless  ejaculations  seemed  full  of  a  startling  significance  in 
his  mouth  and  nose. 

"  Brother  Bridges,  they  said  to  me,  how's  your  soul  ?  I 
couldn't  give  'em  a  straightforward  answer," 

Will  woke  up  again.  It  was  not  now  the  horn-spectacled 
speaker — he  had  apparently  been  wiped  off  the  floor  at  last,  and 
was  not  even  visible — it  was  a  man  with  a  humorous  twinkle 
and  a  red  beard. 

"  But  if  they  had  asked  me,  how's  your  body ?  " 

There  was  a  faint  snigger  from  a  thick-set  girl,  instantly 
repressed  by  her  shocked  mother  ;  but  after  Will  had  extracted 
what  relief  he  could  from  this  incident,  he  tried  vainly  to  extract 
from  the  anecdote  the  exciting  edification  it  held  for  the  others. 
"  How  can  I  go  to  Romford  and  tell  people  I  haven't  got  salva- 
tion ?  "  A  dramatic  crisis  indeed  for  all  save  Will,  who  did  not 
even  stifle  his  yawn.  The  man's  journey  to  Romford  seemed 
infinitely  unimportant  compared  with  journeys  going  on  every 
Tuesday  and  Friday,  and  despitefully  checked  on  Sunday. 

Once  the  door  opened,  but  it  was  only  for  a  shambling  youth 
in  his  teens,  and  Will  did  not  share  the  satisfaction  of  the  congre- 
gation at  this  new,  if  belated,  proof  of  their  vitality. 

"  We're  not  afeared,  no,  not  the  humblest  of  us,"  pursued  the 
red-bearded  man,  catching  fresh  inspiration  from  this  continuous 
rise  in  their  numbers.  "  And  why  ?  Because  we  don't  go  to 
work  without  a  Partner." 

Here  at  last  was  a  definite  image  through  the  blur,  and  if  Will 
in  a  vivid  flash  saw  a  working-partner  for  himself  in  a  less  sublime 
incarnation  than  the  speaker  had  in  mind,  he  was  for  once  as 
a-quiver  as  his  father,  who  now,  albeit  with  the  stock  exclamation 
of  "  Be-yu-tiful !  "  proceeded  to  add  real  tears  to  the  contents 
of  his  capacious  handkerchief. 

When  Will  became  attentive  again,  it  was  a  new  voice  testify- 
ing, and  the  matter  seemed  quite  sensational. 

"  They  used  to  be  carried  away  and  buried  in  a  day.      But 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  203 

when  our  Brother  Bundock's  boy  got  it,  we  had  a  special  prayer- 
meeting,  and  even  the  marks  were  light  1  " 

Oh  !  So  it  was  only  the  postman's  smallpox.  He  looked 
round  in  vain  for  Her  Majesty's  servant :  indeed  a  general 
consciousness  that  the  hero  of  the  story  was  ungratefully  absent, 
damped  its  appeal — only  the  man  with  the  mutton-chop  whiskers 
called  out  with  unabated  ardour,  "  Glory  !  "  Will  felt  that  the 
glory  was  to  Bundock,  thus  valiantly  sticking  to  his  lack  of 
convictions.  More  than  even  during  the  last  week,  life  at  Little 
Bradmarsh  seemed  impossible,  as  impossible  as  in  his  boyhood  ; 
better  had  he  rushed  with  the  mob  of  his  mates  to  California  ; 
even  now  it  was  probably  the  best  thing  to  do  with  his  ninety 
pounds,  unmanly  though  it  were  to  flee  and  leave  this  girl 
carrier  with  her  arrogance  unbroken. 

In  her  absence,  if  only  one  of  the  females  would  get  up  !  That 
would  be  at  least  a  change.  But  no  !  The  sex  was  shy  to-day, 
though  the  forenoon  was,  he  remembered,  the  traditional  time 
for  its  testifyings.  Perhaps  it  was  the  presence  of  this  stalwart 
young  stranger  that  tongue-tied  it. 

But  the  males  seemed  to  be  telling  their  soul-stories  at  him, 
challenging  his  eye,  appealing  to  his  black  jacket — or  was  that 
only  a  morbid  impression  of  his  ?  An  outsider  might  have  been 
touched  by  the  thread  of  spiritual  poetry  in  these  outwardly 
commonplace  lives,  but  Will,  being  of  them,  had  the  familiarity 
that  breeds  boredom,  if  not  contempt.  And  contempt,  too,  was 
not  wanting  to  this  elegantly  clad  and  much-travelled  connoisseur 
of  men  and  women  and  creeds,  who  had  seen  even  French  cathe- 
drals in  Canada,  and  knew  that  Roman  Catholics  were  not  the 
scarlet  beasts  his  infancy  had  somehow  imagined  them.  Once  he 
caught  Mr.  Charles  Mott's  eye  fixed  upon  him  with  a  curious, 
wondering  gaze,  which  seemed  to  change  to  a  wink  as  eye  met 
eye.  Will's  eye,  however,  remaining  serious,  a  flush  overspread 
the  ex-potboy's  face,  and  he  looked  away. 

But  Will's  contempt  passed  into  alarm  when,  at  a  sudden  pause 
in  the  testifyings,  all  other  eyes  unquestionably  converged  on 
him.  He  turned  as  red  as  Charley  Mott,  and  glued  his  eyes  to 
his  hymn-book,  not  daring  to  look  up  till  another  voice  indicated 
that  the  Spirit  had  found  a  more  willing  tongue  for  its  organ. 
But  his  relief  was  mixed  with  disgust,  for  it  was  the  dry  voice  of 
the  original  grey-haired  reader,  and  it  seemed  bent  on  a  sermon 
which  had  not  even  the  mitigated  brightness  of  a  confession. 


204  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Then,  autobiography  seemed  suddenly  to  break  through  it,  for 
Will's  wandering  thoughts  were  fixed  by  an  anecdote  about 
riding  to  Rochester  seven  miles  on  a  donkey  on  a  winter's 
evening.  "  Lord  bless  me  !  "  interpolated  the  nasal  voice,  so 
distracting  Will  that  he  never  understood  how  the  story  led  up 
to  a  doctor's  remark  :  "  I  must  have  your  leg  off,"  a  design  the 
medical  materialist  appeared  to  have  carried  out. 

Will  tried  to  peer  under  the  table  to  see  the  preacher's*  peg, 
but  failing  to  perceive  any  signs  of  corkiness,  concluded  that  the 
anecdote  was  not  personal.  He  gathered  that  after  this  melan- 
choly amputation  by  impotent  Science,  Faith  had  sufficed  to 
keep  the  rest  of  the  man  together.  Medicine  had  subsequently 
proclaimed  he  was  in  a  galloping  consumption,  "  but  he  ain't 
dead  yet — ^he's  still  sound  and  whole,"  cried  the  preacher  para- 
doxically, to  the  applausive  "  Glory  !  "  of  the  tireless  commentator. 

Another  illustrious  example  of  regeneration — the  preacher  kept 
Will  awake  by  recounting — had  begun  life  as  a  parson.  But 
none  is  beyond  hope  ;  even  in  the  sacristy  one  is  not  safe  from 
the  Spirit,  and  unable  to  go  any  longer  through  the  flummeries 
and  mummeries  of  the  Established  Church,  he  had  given  up  his 
living  and  fallen — at  one  time — so  low  that  he  was  glad  to  become 
a  potman  in  a  public-house. 

All  eyes  were  here  turned  towards  the  unfortunate  Charley 
Mott,  and  from  his  squirming  figure  to  Mother  Gander,  sitting  so 
stern  and  stiff ;  but  the  tension  relaxed  when  the  preacher — 
perhaps  tactfully — went  on  to  mention  that  it  was  at  "  The 
White  Hart  "  in  Colchester  :  where  the  landlord  and  landlady 
had  both  "  parsecuted "  him.  They  were  now  both  dead. 
("  Glory !  "  from  the  nasal  punctuator.)  "  I  am  sorry  they  are 
dead,"  said  the  preacher  magnanimously.  "  But  the  Lord's  arm 
is  not  short."  And  while  they  were  well  dead.  Will  learnt  that 
their  poor,  persecuted  potman  had  now  a  chapel  of  his  own, 
where  he  preached  "  Full  Salvation."  Twenty  or  thirty  were,  it 
appeared,  saved  regularly  and  punctually  every  Sunday  evening. 
"  Glory  !  "  trumpeted  the  nasal  voic^,  and  again  Will,  sullen 
and  glowering,  felt  that  the  whole  congregation  was  palpitating 
with  expectation  that  he  would  leap  to  his  feet  and  declare 
himself  similarly  saved,  or  at  least  not  lost  during  his  long 
absence.  But  he  was  not  going  to  make  a  fool  of  himself,  he 
told  himself  harshly.  He  would  sooner  face  the  ordeal  of  escape, 
of  running  the  gauntlet  of  the  Brothers  and  Sisters,   and  he 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  205 

looked  round  wildly  towards  the  door,  perceiving  with  satisfac- 
tion that  the  late  youth  had  left  it  slightly  ajar.  Then,  to  his 
joy  and  the  congregation's  disappointment,  another  worshipper 
took  the  word,  or  was  taken  by  it ;  Bidlake,  the  bargee,  with  his 
dog-eyes  now  shining  and  his  shaggy  face  sublimated,  who 
declared  with  touching  fervour  that  he  would  praise  God  as  long 
as  breath  was  in  him,  and  with  the  death-rattle  in  his  throat  he 
would  cry :  "  You  can  do,  Gord,  what  you  like  with  me ! " 
Ephraim  recalled  the  coup  by  which  he  had  converted  his  wife, 
whom  family  sorrows  had  made  an  infidel.  "  Ef  you  won't  goo 
to  heaven  with  me,  says  Oi,  Oi'll  goo  to  hell  with  you  !  "  Now 
they  both  pulled  and  poled  together  and  were  happy — so  happy, 
despite  family  losses  and  troubles.  "  Most  men  ain't  fit  to  live 
nor  ready  to  die.  Just  drifters.  Throw  'em  the  life-line — the 
life-line  afore  they  drift  away  !  "  And  with  a  vivid  gesture  he 
threw  an  imaginary  rope.  By  accident  or  design  it  was  in  Will's 
direction,  and  again  the  poor  young  man,  with  a  stifling  sense  of 
being  lassoed,  became  the  cynosure  of  every  eye.  But,  for- 
tunately for  him,  Ephraim  Bidlake  did  not  pause  here,  and  his 
rhapsody  poured  on  ;  "  Glorious  truth  " — "  one  generation  to 
the  tother  " — "  the  prayer  of  roighteousness  " — "  come  as  you 
are  " — "  wain  to  trust  in  man  " — a  veritable  cascade  of  phrases 
that,  falling  on  Will's  head,  gradually  lowered  it  in  sleep.  An 
impromptu  speech  is  usually  one  the  speaker  cannot  wind  up, 
and  the  worthy  bargee  went  on  tangling  himself  up  more  and 
more,  till  it  looked  doubtful  if  he  would  ever  have  come  to  a 
stop,  had  not  something  happened  which  stole  even  his  breath 
away. 

Through  the  interstice  of  the  door  came  suddenly  sidling  a 
little  white  dog.  But  this  accession  to  the  congregation  pro- 
duced no  joy,  merely  a  sense  of  profanity  as  it  pattered  up  the 
central  parting,  leaving,  moreover,  wet  prints  of  its  paws. 
Springing  without  hesitation  or  apology  upon  the  sleeper's  best 
trousers,  it  curled  itself  up  comfortably  with  a  grunt.  Assuredly 
Will  was  not  fated  to-day  to  escape  the  centre  of  the  stage. 

The  young  man  recognized  Nip  instantly,  and  his  yawn  of 
awakening  changed  into  a  gasp,  and  his  somnolent  pulse  into  a 
precipitate  beat.  The  animal's  leap  was  indeed  sudden  enough 
to  startle  the  strongest  heart.  Will  turned  his  head  instinctively 
towards  the  door — oblivious  even  of  his  damped  trousers — but 
there  was  no  sign  of  Nip's  mistress.     Still,  whether  she  was  in 


2o6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  vicinity  or  not,  the  dog  was  clearly  out  of  place.  Grasping 
his  pretext  of  escape  firmly  by  the  collar  and  clasping  his 
struggling  opportunity  to  his  breast,  he  stole  from  the  meeting- 
house. 

Ill 

He  expected  to  see  Nip's  owner  outside.  In  his  reading  of  the 
situation  she  had  arrived  so  late  that  while  she  was  hesitating 
whether  to  come  in,  the  shameless  dog  had  burst  through  the 
door,  attracted  doubtless  by  the  aroma  of  all  those  dinner- 
packets,  and  this  had  made  her  still  more  ashamed  to  enter. 
But  the  quaint  little  street  was  bare  of  Jinny.  So  sunless  did 
it  appear  without  her,  that  he  scarcely  noticed  that  the  sky 
was  actually  overcast  again,  and  that  the  black  cloud  had  re- 
gathered.  He  stood  still,  hesitating ;  in  which  relaxed  mood  of 
his  the  spasmodic  struggles  of  the  animal  were  successful,  and 
Will  became  painfully  aware  that  he  was  alone  with  his  moist 
trousers  and  his  London  coat  snowed  over  with  little  hairs,  while 
Nip,  after  some  preliminary  gambollings  and  barkings  at  the 
recovery  of  the  liberty  he  had  himself  abandoned,  was  vanishing 
into  the  High  Street.  So  assured  were  Nip's  movements  that 
Will  divined  at  once  he  had  only  to  follow  him  to  restore  him  to 
his  mistress,  and  without  waiting  even  to  brush  off  the  little 
white  hairs,  he  darted  towards  the  street  corner,  and  was  happily 
just  in  time  to  see  the  excellent  creature  trotting  into  the  court- 
yard of  "  The  Black  Sheep." 

His  pleasure  was  not,  however,  free  from  surprise.  What  was 
Jinny  doing  at  her  business  headquarters  on  the  Lord's  Day  ? 
Or  had  she  come  in  her  cart  to  chapel,  and  put  it  up  there  ?  He 
ran  towards  the  picturesque  stable-yard.  There  were  a  good 
many  chaises,  gigs,  dog-carts  and  even  carriages  standing — 
the  countryside  drove  to  its  churches — but  there  was  no  trace  of 
either  Jinny  or  Methusalem,  while  Nip  was  standing  with  hang- 
dog air  by  the  doorstep,  under  a  poster  of  "  Duke's  Marionettes." 
But  as  Will  drew  nearer,  he  turned  tail,  sauntered  down  the 
passage,  surveyed  the  painted  hand,  and  then  with  an  air  of 
decision  bounded  up  the  stairs.  Ah,  she  would  be  in  the  parlour  ! 
And  Nip's  follower  bounded  upstairs  too,  keeping  closely  to  heel. 
But  no  !  Nip  was  not  on  dining  bent,  though  the  door  was 
open.  Rejecting  all  the  appetizing  scents  that  already  emanated 
from  the  eating-room,  Nip  pit-patted  along  the  dusky  corridor 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  207 

and  began  whining  and  scrabbling  outside  a  closed  and  numbered 
door.  Very  soon  it  receded  before  his  pleadings  ;  and  as  he 
scampered  in,  "  You  poor  dog  !  "  came  out  in  the  girlish  voice  that 
had  so  lacerated  him  with  "  Fol  de  rols  !  "  But  not  the  worst 
of  that  musical  torment  could  vie  with  the  jar  to  his  heart-strings 
when,  through  the  reclosing  door,  came  another  unforgettable 
voice  with  the  jovial  interrogatory  :  "  Well,  Nip,  and  what  was 
the  parson's  text  ?  " 

He  remembered  now — ^with  a  cold  sick  horror — that  this  was 
the  very  bedroom  from  which  indignant  housemaids  had  excluded 
its  tenant — yes,  there  was  Reynard  opposite  with  his  glassy  eye 
and  his  erected  brush.  Possibly  Tony  Flip  was  not  even  up. 
That  was  what  came  of  minxes  driving  Methusalems  !  Instead 
of  being  at  divine  service,  like  all  God-fearing  humanity,  she  was 
coquetting — or  worse — ^with  a  mountebank  in  an  inn  bedroom. 
Yet  he  felt  he  must  not  spy  upon  her — any  moment,  too,  she 
might  come  out — and  he  hurried  downstairs  and  stood  on  the 
step  under  the  ironwork  lamp,  louring  like  the  great  black 
cloud,  which  he  now  perceived  to  be  in  heaven-sent  harmony 
witji  his  mood.  And  that  drivelling  patriarch  had  foamed  at  the 
mouth  when  he  had  hinted  that  woman's  place  was  not  a  cart ! 

But  Jinny  did  not  keep  him  more  than  five  endless  minutes. 

"  Hullo,  Will,"  she  cried  gaily,  as  she  tripped  from  the  passage- 
way with  Nip  in  her  arms.     "  What  are  you  doing  here  ?  " 

How  the  broad  frame  of  her  bonnet  set  off  the  picture  of  her 
face  !  Small  wonder  a  loose-living  showman  found  it  bewitching. 
Not  so  William  Flynt — ^with  his  high  ideals  of  womanhood  I 
Even  to  be  called  "  Will "  was  provoking  rather  than  flattering  : 
he  felt  it  now  less  the  perquisite  of  the  old  friend  than  the  proof 
of  an  indiscriminating  levity. 

"  I've  come  for  the  dinner,"  he  said  coldly.  Nip  gazed  straight 
at  him  with  his  mild  brown  eye,  but  although  Will  did  not  suppose 
that  the  brute  would  open  its  mouth  like  Balaam's  ass  and  give 
him  away,  he  could  not  look  it  in  the  head.  He  turned  his 
shoulder  on  dog  and  damsel  and  stared  at  the  poster. 

"  I  wish  I  could  have  dinner  with  you,"  replied  Jinny  frankly. 
"  But  I  must  be  off  to  feed  Gran'fer.  Farmer  Gale's  trap  should 
be  here  bv  now." 

"  He  drives  you  home  too  ?  "    He  turned  towards  her,  startled. 

"  Within  half  a^mile — ^it  is  a  treat  for  me  to  have  another 
carrier  " 


208  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  But  he  isn't  a  Peculiar,"  he  observed  severely. 
"  No,  he's  a  Wesleyan  like  Gran'fer,  who  used  to  drive  his 
father  about.  He  puts  up  at  *  The  Chequers '  hard  by  his 
chapel — his  service  ought  to  be  over.  I  hope  his  horse  hasn't 
taken  fright  again — we  had  just  got  to  the  High  Street  when 
the  storm  broke,  and  at  the  first  flash  the  horse  was  off, 
galloped  miles  beyond  the  town  before  he  could  be  got  to  a 
standstill." 

"  He  might  have  killed  you,  the  silly  !  "  cried  Will,  meaning 
the  farmer. 

"  Yes,"  said  Jinny  simply,  meaning  the  animal.  "  By  the 
time  he  was  walked  warily  back,  it  was  too  late  to  go  in.  But 
I  don't  wonder  Nip  was  worried  about  me.  You  see  he  likes  to 
run  behind  the  trap,  poor  fellow  " — she  wasted  a  kiss  upon  his 
unresponsive  head — "  and  he  always  comes  up  in  time  to  say 
good-bye  at  the  chapel  door,  where  he  hangs  about  till  I  come 
out.  But  this  time,  of  course,  he  must  have  been  wandering 
about  in  search  of  me.  He  wasn't  there  when  I  passed  just 
now.  Mr.  Flippance  declares  he  must  have  gone  to  Chipstone 
Church,  in  the  idea  I'd  suddenly  joined  it."  ^ 

And  the  girlish  laugh  rang  out,  dissipating  some  of  his  humours 
as  much  by  its  joyousness  as  by  the  innocent  mention  of  the 
Showman. 

"  But  why  shouldn't  you  join  it,  Miss  Quarles  ?  "  he  said. 
*'  It  can't  be  duller  than  chapel." 

"  Now,  now,  Will."  She  shook  a  serious  finger.  "  You  ought 
to  have  gone  to  chapel  yourself  this  morning.  And  don't  call 
me  Miss  Quarles." 

"  But  I  prefer  to  call  you  Miss  Quarles." 

*'  But  why  not  Jinny  ?  "     Her  voice  was  plaintive. 

"  Because  everybody  else  calls  you  that." 

"  Is  that  any  reason  why  you  should  call  me  Miss  Quarles  ?  " 

"  If  you  can't  see  it !  "  he  began. 

"  I  can't,  and  I  hope  you  won't  call  me  Miss  Quarles." 

"  And  why  shouldn't  I  ?  " 

"  Because  I  won't  answer  to  it." 

"  And  why  not  ?  " 

"  Because,  Will,  it's  not  my  name." 

He  gasped.     "  Not  your  name  ?  " 

She  laughed  merrily  at  his  discomfiture.  "  It's  a  long  story 
and  Farmer  Gale  will  be  here.     Hulloa,"  she  went  on,  making 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  209 

his  confusion  worse  confounded,  *'  how  did  Nip's  hairs  get  on 
you  ?  " 

He  flushed,  and  flicked  nervously  at  his  coat.  "  There  are 
other  white  dogs,"  he  said  evasively. 

"  Well,  don't  let  him  spoil  your  coat." 

"  And  what  about  your  bodice  ?  " 

"  Oh,  mine  isn't  new  and  Londony." 

He  was  gratified  at  her  perception  :  still  more  at  her  setting 
down  Nip,  That  animal,  however,  was  in  the  rampageous  mood 
which  always  followed  his  restoration  to  freedom,  and  he  began 
leaping  up  at  his  mistress's  hand. 

"  Down,  Nip,  down  !  Oh,  I  do  believe  he's  bitten  through  my 
new  glove  !  "     She  pulled  it  off  ruefully  to  examine  the  damage. 

"  Sensible  dog  !  "  Will  growled.  "  He  knows  you  oughtn't  to 
be  wearing  Mr.  Flippance's  gloves." 

Her  own  little  white  teeth  flashed  out  in  a  mocking  smile  : 
'^  Lucky  you  are  going  to  buy  me  another  pair  !  " 

"  Me  !     Why,  you  wouldn't  let  me  when  I  offered." 

"  Of  course  not.     I'm  thinking  of  the  pair  you'll  be  owing  me." 

"  Owing  you  ?  " 

"  You  don't  suppose  you'll  win  the  wager,  do  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  that !  "  He  was  disconcerted  again.  "  Of  course  I'U 
win  it,"  he  said  defiantly  in  a  bombastic  burst.  "  It  won't  take 
me  a  day's  practice  to  blow  down  the  walls  of  Jericho." 

She  laughed.  "  So  you  do  remember  your  Bible.  Well,  I'll 
be  satisfied  if  you  blow  Nip  back  from  a  rabbit." 

"  We  shall  see.  Have  you  superscribed  again  ?  "  he  asked 
pompously,  assured  of  his  accuracy  this  time. 

"  Not  yet — I  expect  the  horn'U  be  at  Chipstone  by  Tuesday — 
you  shall  have  it  the  same  evening." 

"  And  the  next  day  I'll  be  wanting  gloves,"  he  said  loftily. 

"  We  shall  see — or  rather  hear.  What  size  do  you  take, 
though  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know — twice  yours,  I  suppose." 

"  Oh,  not  twice  !  " 

"  Why,  sure  !  "  And  he  suddenly  prisoned  her  little  ungloved 
hand  between  his  brawny  palms.  "  I  could  easily  crush  it,"  he 
said,  with  a  strange  desire  to  do  so,  pressing  it  indeed  almost  to 
hurting-point.  At  that  instant  a  far-palpitating  blueness  trans- 
figured the  courtyard,  and  from  above-stairs  came  a  terrific 
racket  as  if  all  the  plates  and  dishes  in  the  dining-room  were 

o 


210  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

hurling  themselves  at  one  another.  Will  felt  the  girl's  fingers 
curl  spasmodically  round  his  and  hold  them  tight  :  her  face  went 
white,  and  he  seemed  to  hear  her  heart  thumping. 

"  Don't  be  frightened  !  "  he  said,  with  his  first  manly  satisfac- 
tion in  her.     Surely  she  was  clinging  to  him  for  protection. 

"  That'll  be  a  fireball  down  the  chimney,"  she  observed  with 
disappointing  coolness.  "  There  was  one  came  down  last  year 
in  Long  Bradmarsh  and  killed  a  poor  little  chimney-sweep  who 
had  got  stuck  in  the  flue.     It'll  set  the  chimney  on  fire,  I  expect." 

"  This  rain  will  put  it  out,"  he  said,  still  cheerfully  conscious 
of  her  warm  fingers,  and  feeling  a  joy  in  the  deluge  that  had 
been  so  damp  in  his  father's  company.  She  drew  back,  however, 
into  the  passage  to  avoid  the  big  plopping  and  ricochetting  rain- 
drops and  her  hand  got  disentangled.  "  What  fun  if  it's  fallen 
down  Mr.  Flippance's  chimney,"  she  laughed.  "  Make  him  get 
up  early." 

Her  laughter  seemed  to  ring  untrue,  hysterical. 

"  Isn't  he  up  yet  ?  "  he  asked,  trying  to  speak  lightly. 

"  Oh,  he  never  gets  up  on  a  Sunday — not  properly,  I  mean. 
I  saw  him  half  up,  but  he's  gone  back  to  bed  and  is  already 
snoring — I  heard  him." 

"  But  how  could  you  hear  him  ?  "  he  asked,  with  careful 
carelessness. 

"  Oh,  I  was  in  his  daughter's  room,  whiling  away  the  time  of 
waiting — she's  got  ten  times  his  sense — ^when,  woke  up  by  our 
voices,  I  suppose,  in  he  trails  through  the  communicating  door 
in  his  fancy  dressing-gown,  yawning  like  a  mouse-trap,  and  asks 
me  to  buy  him  a  horse  at  the  fair." 

"  A  horse  at  the  fair  !  "  Scarcely  had  he  enjoyed  the  relief  of 
working  out  that  he  had  taken  the  harmless  adjoining  bedroom 
for  the  Showman's,  when  this  new  blow  struck  him,  like  hooves 
on  his  chest. 

"  Of  course  I  wouldn't  listen  to  him,"  she  said. 

"  Of  course  not  !  "  His  breast  expanded  again.  "  How  can 
a  woman  understand  buying  horses  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  mean  that."  Jinny  was  distinctly  colder.  "  I 
mean  it's  the  Lord's  Day.  He'll  have  to  repeat  his  order  on 
Tuesday." 

"  But  surely  you  wouldn't  go  to  a  horse  fair  ?  " 

"  Whv  not  ?  " 

"  Because — it's — it's  so  horsey." 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  211 

She  laughed  again.     "  And  so  fairish,  too,  isn't  it  ?  " 
*'  What  does  he  want  a  horse  for  ?  "  he  asked  sullenly. 
^  "  I  don't  suppose  it's  for  dinner — he  isn't  a  Frenchy.     But  he's 
got  a  caravan,  hasn't  he  ? — and  he  has  to  begin  his  summer 


tour  soon." 


"  And  why  can't  he  buy  his  own  horses  ?  " 

"  That  infant  ?     Why  his  last  horse  died  of  old  age  at  four  !  " 

"  And  what  about  that  sensible  daughter  of  his  ?  " 

"  She  hasn't  got  horse-sense,"  said  Jinny,  smiling. 

"  Well,  I  don't  see  how  it  comes  into  your  business." 

"  A  carrier  has  to  buy  whatever  she's  asked." 

"  Whatever  she  can  carry.     You  can't  carry  a  horse." 

"  No,  but  it  can  carry  me.  Besides,  I've  often  carried  a  calf 
or  a  pig,  and  where  am  I  to  draw  the  line  ?  " 

"  You'll  be  buying  elephants  next,"  he  said,  with  a  bitter 
remembrance  of  Mr.  Flippance's  story. 

"  I'm  too  old  for  gingerbread,"  she  replied  unexpectedly. 
"  But  I  haven't  forgotten  the  one  you  gave  me  once."  He 
trembled  under  her  radiant  gratitude,  with  its  evocation  of  the 
poetry  of  childhood.  But  a  convulsive  bound  forward  on  the 
part  of  Nip  broke  up  the  argument.  "  Ah,  here's  Farmer  Gale 
coming  along,"  she  said  cheerfully. 

Just  like  the  fellow,  he  thought,  to  come  just  at  that  moment. 
And  his  resentment  at  the  arrival  of  the  dog-cart  was  not  even 
mitigated  by  the  watery  spectacle  presented  by  its  red-faced 
driver,  whose  personable  and  still  youthful  figure  rose  from  a 
streaming  tarpaulin,  to  which  a  hat  with  an  unremoved  mourning- 
band  contributed  its  drippings. 

^'  You  can't  go  in  that  rain,"  Will  protested.  "  Let  him  go 
without  you — I'll  order  a  trap  myself." 

"  But  you  said  you  were  dining  here — I  can't  wait." 

He  winced — his  white  lie  had  come  home  like  a  curse  to  roost. 

"  You  can  dine  with  me  !  " 

"  And  what  about  Gran'fer  ?  "^ 

"  Well,  I  can  dine  at  home."  But  she  scarcely  heard  him. 
She  was  already  fastening  a  handkerchief  over  her  Sunday 
bonnet — a  fascinating  process.  "  There's  a  good  cover — I'll 
snuggle  right  in." 

Shameless,  he  thought,  riding  about  cheek  by  jowl  and  skirt 
by  trouser  with  a  young  man  not  even  of  her  own  faith.  That 
thin  tiny  boy  sandwiched  between  was  no  real  separation  :  why, 


212  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  tarpaulin  almost  swallowed  him  under  !  They  ought  at 
least  to  sit  back  to  back,  and  if  there  was  any  chivalry  in  the 
pudding-faced  lout,  he  would  transfer  the  tarpaulin  to  the  back 
seat.  How  could  Jinny  forget  that  the  magnate  of  Little 
Bradmarsh — cursed  Cornish  interloper — ^was  no  fit  company  for 
the  likes  of  her  ?  He  wondered  that  people  did  not  warn  her  : 
but  they  were  inured  to  her  vagaries,  he  supposed.  And  even  if 
the  man  meant  honourably,  in  his  reckless  passion,  how  dare  a 
widower  with  a  great  thumping  boy  approach  a  rosebud  ?  Ah, 
now  she  was  talking  to  this  second-hand,  warmed-up  aspirant, 
who  had  already  killed  off  one  wife  ;  inquiring  sweetly  about  his 
animal's  behaviour  under  the  recent  flash. 

"  Steady  as  a  plough-horse  !  "  came  the  cheery  reply.  "  My 
eye.  Jinny,  you  did  handle  him  wonderful.  I  reckon  you  saved 
my  life  !  " 

"  And  what  about  my  own  ?  "  With  a  laugh  whose  gaiety 
stabbed,  she  sprang  upon  the  step.  "  Good-bye,  Will.  Hope 
you'll  enjoy  your  dinner." 

"  Good-bye,  Miss  Quarles,"  he  said  coldly.    "  I  mean,  Miss " 

But  before  he  had  realized  he  could  not  fill  up  the  blank,  the 
trap  had  started,  and  he  could  not  even  bound  behind,  like  the 
joyous-barking  Nip.  Nothing  tangible  was  left  of  the  whole 
delectable  and  distressing  episode  except  some  white  hairs  on  the 
fashionable  fabric  of  Moses  &  Son. 


IV 

"  Hope  you'll  enjoy  your  dinner  !  "  Her  last  words  still  rang 
in  his  ear.  His  dinner  !  Cold  meat  wrapped  in  a  "  muckinger," 
and  consumed  on  chapel  benches  among  drab  Elders  and  elderly 
Sisters  and  better-lost  Brothers  and  dismal  rat-catching  Deacons. 
No,  sooner  a  crust  and  cheese  at  the  bar.  But  why  not  roast 
beef  and  Yorkshire  pudding  in  the  parlour — why  not  make  his 
lie  true  ?  Yes,  lies  were  reprehensible  :  truth  was  always  best, 
and  his  chaps  began  to  water  with  ethical  excitement.  But 
alas,  with  a  sudden  misgiving  he  put  his  hand  in  his  pocket. 
Not  a  farthing  !  In  the  agitation  of  his  chapel-going,  he  had 
^forgotten  to  transfer  his  purse  to  the  Sunday  suit — nay,  even  the 
ninety  pounds  were  left  in  the  discarded  waistcoat,  he  remembered 
with  an  unreasonable  chill.  He  was  to  be  nailed  to  his  lie,  then. 
True,  he  might  possibly  get   credit,   but  it  was   an   awkward 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  213 

situation  at  best.  No,  better  go  back  to  his  cold  meat — besides, 
his  poor  old  father  would  be  wondering  and  waiting.  It  w^ould 
be  cruel  to  desert  and  distract  him,  and,  the  rain  appearing 
somewhat  thinner,  he  turned  up  his  coat-collar  and  started  out, 
almost  colliding  at  the  archway  with  the  Mott  couple,  lovingly 
entwined  under  a  spacious  umbrella.  They  at  least  had  no  need 
to  dine  in  chapel.  Mr.  Charles  Mott  looked  at  him  again  with 
the  same  curious  wonder.  "  You're  not  going  back  ?  "  he  cried 
involuntarily. 

"  I  can't  desert  my  dad  !  "  Will  answered,  somewhat  shame- 
facedly. 

"  And  he  must  eat,  Charley  darling,"  Mother  Gander  intervened. 
"  You  know  how  bad  our  Sunday  dinners  are." 

"  I  haven't  even  got  any  money  with  me,"  he  cried,  with  a  last 
wild  hope.  But  Mother  Gander  did  not  respond  to  his  longing 
for  truth.  "  Lend  him  the  umbrella,  dearest,"  she  said  ruth- 
lessly.    "  We've  another  for  the  afternoon  service." 

Accepting  it  with  mitigated  gratitude — the  umbrella  he  was 
trusted  with  was  worth  more  than  the  dinner,  he  thought 
bemusedly — he  moved  more  slowly  to  the  chapel ;  wondering, 
too,  how  hotel-keeping  could  be  reconciled  with  the  Sabbatarian 
conscience. 

He  found  the  meeting-house  now  turned  into  an  eating-house. 
The  congregation  had,  however,  visibly  thinned  :  only  those  who 
had  no  hosts  or  homes  in  Chipstone  remaining  for  this  love-feast, 
with  the  exception  of  Deacon  Mawhood,  who,  rather  than  go 
home  to  his  wife,  remained  at  the  table  as  presiding  dignitary, 
flanked  by  great  glass  jugs  of  water.  The  ravages  in  the  ranks 
appeared  to  Will  an  eloquent  testimony  to  the  spread  of  the 
doctrine  in  Chipstone  proper  :  in  his  young  days  the  sect  had 
been  more  suburban  and  rural,  and  the  chapel  at  that  hour  had 
seethed  with  hungry  pilgrims.  Still,  there  was  quite  a  happy 
hubbub,  and  the  spectacle,  with  its  real  sense  of  brotherhood, 
struck  from  him  more  sympathy  than  anything  in  the  service  ; 
and  when  a  Sister  told  her  cherub  not  to  "  goffle  "  so,  he  was 
mysteriously  touched  by  the  old  word,  and  the  memories  it 
roused,  to  a  sincerer  respect  for  the  creed  which  satisfied  Jinny. 
What  fun  the  boys  had  had  in  the  wagon,  driving  home  with  her  ! 

Caleb  was  chewing  a  hunk  of  bread  and  meat.  The  handker- 
chief-parcel— shrunk  like  the  congregation — incarnadined  the 
bench.     "  Oi  had  to  begin,"  he  explained  apologetically,  "  seein' 


214  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

as  Oi'd  said  grace,  expectin'  you  back  every  second,  and  it 
seemed  foolin'  with  the  Lord  to  wait  more  than  ten  minutes. 
Pity  that  dog  worrited  you.  Be-yu-tiful  things  were  brought 
out  when  you  was  gone.     Where  did  you  git  to  ?  " 

He  evaded  the  question.     "  Fm  not  hungry." 

"  Not  arter  that  walk  of  ourn  !  "  cried  Caleb  incredulously. 
"  Oi  count  you've  had  your  dinner  somewhere  else." 

"  Yes,  ojff  the  dog  !  "  he  said  a  bit  crossly. 

Caleb  smiled.  "  Oi'U  not  believe  that,"  he  said  with  an  air  of 
infinite  cuteness. 

"  I'll  have  a  drink,"  condescended  Will. 

"  Do  !  "  Caleb  passed  him  a  large  tin  mug  of  water.  "  And 
there's  plenty  more  where  that  come  from."  Will  knew  it  was 
Brother  Quint — the  "  snob  "  or  shoemaker  who  lived  next  door — 
who  supplied  these  limitless  streams. 

"  Ain't  she  beautifully  polished  ?  "  Caleb  went  on  naively,  when 
his  thirsty  son  set  the  mug  down.  "  Holds  noigh  a  quart — Oi 
never  see  sech  mugs  nowhere  else  !  And  Brother  Quint'U  fill  it 
with  biling  for  our  tea.  There,  Will !  There's  your  favourite 
sausages  mother  put  in  for  you,  special.  None  o'  your  dogs  in 
that  !  "     And  he  chuckled,  brimming  over  with  holy  glee. 

Cooled  by  the  long  draught,  Will  allowed  himself  to  be  seduced 
by  the  veal  sausages,  and,  finding  with  surprise  that  the  first 
slid  down  his  throat  in  a  twinkling,  he  was  soon  depleting  the 
parcel  into  a  mere  "  muckinger."  And  at  this  Caleb's  innocent 
happiness  was  complete. 

But  the  fate  that  stalks  mortals  at  their  culminating  felicities 
now  sped  its  arrow.  In  excavating  a  pickled  walnut  from  the 
remains  of  the  parcel,  Caleb  loosed  a  minute  cardboard  box, 
which  sprang  maHciously  to  the  floor  and  then,  to  the  agitation 
of  the  neighbours,  rolled  round  and  round  towards  the  table 
under  the  very  eyes  of  the  rat-catcher. 

The  Deacon  stooped  down  zealously  to  pick  it  up,  and  then 
held  it  on  high.  It  was  a  pill-box  !  "  Who  brought  this  ?  "  he 
cried  in  stern  prophetic  accents,  across  the  table. 

The  happy  hubbub  ceased,  the  holy  glee  was  frozen.  In  a 
tense  silence  all  eyes  were  turned  on  the  profane  symbol.  Will 
saw  his  wretched  father's  face  go  red  and  white,  and  his  scraggy 
throat  work  painfully  below  the  ragged  white  beard.  Both  the 
Flynts  guessed  at  once  that  the  careful  Martha  had  slipped  into 
the  packet  her  husband's  usual  pill  before  meals ! 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  215 

It  was  a  dreadful  moment.  For  a  space  in  which  all  nature 
seemed  to  hold  its  breath,  Caleb  sat  rigid  and  dumb. 

"  Whose  propity  is  this  ?  "  asked  the  Deacon  still  more  sternly, 
and  Will  divined  the  mighty  struggle  going  on  in  his  father's 
quaint  conscience  ;  casuistic  questions  as  to  how  far  a  pill-box 
conveyed  unconsciously  had  *  been  "  brought  "  by  him,  or  in 
what  sense  pills  administered  to  him  remorselessly  from  without 
could  be  said  to  be  his  "  property." 

Then  suddenly  Caleb's  lips  opened.  "  Oi  count  'twas  in  my 
parcel,"  he  said  in  tremulous  accents. 

The  sublimity  of  the  confession  thrilled  Will :  he  even  felt  a 
curious  moisture  at  his  eyes.  But  before  the  Deacon,  sitting 
there  like  a  judge  about  td  pronounce  sentence,  could  say  a 
word,  a  blinding  glare,  followed  almost  instantaneously  by  an 
appalling  crashing  and  smashing  right  overhead,  showed  that 
nature  had  indeed  held  its  breath  and  had  now  spoken  in  flame 
and  thunder.  Will's  first  reflection  when  the  daze  had  passed 
away,  and  the  congregation  found  itself  and  its  building  provi- 
dentially safe,  was  that  it  was  indeed  lucky  his  father  had  spoken 
first ;  otherwise  his  confession  might  have  seemed  extorted  by 
terror.  But  Joshua  Mawhood  was  not  the  Deacon  to  let  such 
a  situation  pass  without  profit.  "  The  Lord  havin'  spoke, 
brethren,"  said  he,  "  there  ain't  no  need  for  my  opinion.  The 
thing  Oi  hate  most  in  this  lower  world  is  hypocrisy  and  dis- 
semblin'.  '  Roight  up  and  down,  Jo  Perry,'  as  the  sayin'  goos. 
Ef  we  ain't  been  destroyed,  as  we  sat  here  guzzlin'  and  guttlin', 
'tain't  no  merit  of  the  congregation,  'tis  because  the  Lord  bein' 
marciful  don't  destroy  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  so  long  as  there's 
one  roighteous  man."  He  rose  majestically  and  drew  himself 
up  to  his  full  height,  and  held  the  pill-box  even  higher.  "  Brother 
Flynt,  if  you'll  kindly  step  out,  Oi'U  hand  you  back  your  propity." 

No  fiercer  punishment  could  have  been  devised  for  Caleb's 
gentle  soul :  the  sinner,  isolated,  passing  through  his  shrinking 
Brethren  and  Sisters,  must  come  forward  as  to  a  confession  table. 
No  wonder  the  poor  man  held  back. 

"  Oi  don't,  need  it  now.  Deacon,"  he  said,  with  lips  almost  as 
white  as  his  hair.     "  You  can  throw  it  away  ef  you  like." 

With  malicious  enjoyment  the  Deacon  slowly  and  solemnly 
lifted  the  lid  of  the  pill-box  and  dipped  in  his  fingers,  to  hold  up 
the  impious  contents  to  the  public  execration.  Then  his  face 
changed. 


2i6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Why,  it's  salt  !  "  he  cried  in  angry  disappointment.  It  was 
as  if  the  devil  were  playing  thimblerig  with  him. 

"  Oi  was  thinkin'  the  missus  had  ought  to  put  some  in,"  said 
Caleb,  beaming  again. 

The  w^oman  of  the  baby-cart  now  found  herself  possessed  of 
the  Spirit.     She  sprang  to  her  feet,  a  baby  on  either  arm. 

"  We  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,"  she  shrilled,  "  wherewith  the 
others  shall  be  salted." 

"  Hallelujah  !  "  burst  from  the  mutton-chop  whiskers. 

"  Hallelujah !  "  responded  the  congregation,  and  a  great 
anthem  rolled  out,  outshouting  the  thunder. 


,To  the  disappointment  of  his  father,  who  still  hoped  he  would 
testify.  Will  would  not  stay  for  the  Afternoon  Service.  But  his 
worthy  sire  could  bear  a  disappointment  after  the  revulsion  in 
his  favour,  he  thought.  He  had  to  take  back  the  umbrella  to 
the  Motts,  he  insisted,  or,  with  this  weather,  the  good  Samaritans 
might  be  unable  to  return  to  their  worshipping  :  in  any  case  he 
had  to  see  somebody  at  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  on  urgent  business  : 
business,  he  corrected  hastily,  of  a  spiritual  nature,  calculated  to 
save  certain  souls  from  temptation. 

"  Well,  Oi'm  glad  the  Sperrit's  workin'  !  "  said  Caleb,  "  and 
do  ye  git  back  to  mother  quick  as  you  can,  for  it  ain't  fair  as 
she  should  be  left  at  home,  time  Oi'm  enjoyin'  myself.  Not  that 
'ti8  my  fault  there  ain't  no  chapel  for  Christy  Dolphins —  !  "  He 
checked  himself  and  added  hurriedly :  "  Do  ye  don't  tell  her 
about  the  pill-box  :   happen  she'd  think  Oi  was  wexed." 

"  And  do  ye  don't  say  you  can't  carry  a  box  to  Chipstone  !  " 
mocked  Will  gaily,  glad  to  be  released.  "  And  of  a  Sunday  too 
— you  old  Sabbath-breaker  !  " 

Caleb  did  not  smile  :  the  episode  had  left  too  deep  a  scaf. 
"  Oi  count  the  Deacon's  in  the  roight,"  he  said.  "  'Tis  hypocrisy 
and  dissemblin'  to  take  pills  at  home  and  salt  in  public.  Oi 
count  Oi'll  testify  to  the  truth  this  arternoon." 

"  But  you  only  take  pills  to  keep  off  the  indigestion,  not  to 
cure  it,"  urged  Will,  giving  him  his  own  plea  back.  "  Besides, 
salt  is  a  sort  of  medicine  too  :  without  it  you  might  get  scurvy 
and  goodness  knows  what." 

Caleb   shook   his   head.     "  Lot's   wife   wasn't   turned  into   a 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  217 

medicine.     Any  man  in  his  seven  senses  knows  the  difference 
'twixt  puttin'  salt  or  medicine  on  his  wounds." 

Leaving  his  father  to  execute  his  sublime  purpose,  Will  went 
off  on  his  own  mission  under  protection  of  the  big  Mott  umbrella. 
In  returning  it,  he  learnt  that  even  its  great  ribbed  dome  had 
not  saved  Mr.  Mott  from  a  wetting,  in  consequence  of  which  and 
his  delicate  health  he  was  now  imbibing  stiff  glasses  of  grog  in 
his  bedroom,  hovered  over  by  the  anxious  Mother  Gander.  It 
was  pathetically  out  of  the  question,  Will  gathered,  for  Brother 
Mott  to  attend  chapel  again  that  day.  Will's  "  urgent  business  " 
lay,  however,  with  Mr.  Anthony  Flippance  :  the  soul  to  be  saved 
being  Jinny's,  now  menaced  with  still  further  soilure  from  the 
gross  contacts  of  horse-copers,  cadgers,  kidders,  butchers,  drovers, 
shepherds,  swineherds,  touts,  tramps,  and  all  the  tricksters  and 
pickpockets  of  the  cattle-market. 

The  mission  did  not  loom  unpleasant,  for  although  he  resented 
the  fiction  about  the  Crystal  Palace  and  the  stuffed  elephant,  the 
tall  talk  was  harmless  enough — ^he  had  heard  taller  in  America — 
and  he  was  not  indisposed  for  ungodly  society  after  the  reek  of 
the  chapel.  That  the  genial  Showman  would  instantly  see  the 
matter  from  hit  point  of  view  he  did  not  doubt. 

But  Tony  Flip  was  not  in  the  dining-room  even  in  dishabille, 
and  the  waiter  was  still  so  occupied  with  late  or  leisurely  diners 
as  apparently  to  be  unable  to  conjure  him  up.  "  I've  just  taken 
him  up  his  breakfast,"  he  said,  with  an  envious  sigh.  "  No.  42. 
You'U  find  him." 

But  to  intrude  thus  on  the  Showman's  privacy  seemed  in- 
delicate :  he  waylaid  a  chambermaid  in  the  corridor  and  asked  her 
to  tell  Mr.  Flippance  a  gentleman  would  be  glad  to  see  him  when  he 
had  finished  his  meal.  She  brought  back  a  mysterious  answer  as 
from  Miss  Flippance  that  he  never  saw  clean-shaven  gents. 

Will  fired  up  as  at  an  insult.  Evidently  the  rogue  was  not 
going  to  be  so  malleable  :  that  daughter  of  his,  too,  he  remem- 
bered, had  no  proper  respect  for  Jinny.  "  Tell  'em  I'll  wait  here 
till  my  beard  grows  !  "  he  commanded. 

The  chambermaid  hung  back,  giggling.  He  felt  in  his  pocket 
for  a  sixpence — again  encountering  only  lining.  "  If  you  don't 
take  my  message,  I'll  kiss  you,"  he  menaced.  It  was  a  jest  that 
never  failed  him,  and  it  did  not  fail  now,  though  the  fleeing 
"  tucker-in  "  giggled  more  than  ever.  He  watched  her  enter  the 
lion's  den,  but  hardly  had  she  done  so,  when  the  noble  animal 


2i8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

himself  padded  forth,  grinning  Uke  a  Cheshire  cat,  his  fork 
protruded  Hke  a  claw,  and  just-spluttered  coffee  dripping  from 
his  great  jaws  over  the  breast  of  his  flamboyant  hundred-stained 
hide. 

"  Where  is  he  ?  "  he  roared  genially  to  the  dark  corridor. 
"  Come  in  !     Come  in  1  " 

Will  advanced  defiantly. 

"  So  it's  you  !  I  was  wondering  what  wit  heaven  had  dropped 
with  the  thunder  !  Yankee  yumour — I  ought  to  ha'  guessed  it." 
And  he  nearly  spitted  Will  on  his  fork  in  his  enthusiastic  effort 
to  shake  hands.  "  '  I'll  wait  till  my  beard  grows  ' — ^ha,  ha,  ha  ! 
That  goes  in  this  very  night — no,  there's  no  show  to-night,  hang 
it !  Don't  go,  Polly,"  he  called,  as  he  pulled  Will  into  the  room 
over  a  barrier  of  Bluchers  and  Wellingtons  and  even  Hessian  boots 
with  silken  tassels,  "  we  must  get  that  into  Hamlet.  When  I 
say  to  Ophelia,  ^  Get  thee  to  a  nunnery  ;  go,  farewell: — '  I'll 
wind  up  '  Until  thy  beard  grows.'  That'll  be  your  new  cue, 
Polly." 

"  But  that'll  spoil  the  scene,"  Miss  Flippance  protested,  poised 
in  a  morning  wrapper  in  the  open  doorway  between  the  two 
rooms.  She  was  mysteriously  mantled  in  aromatic  clouds,  like 
the  spirit  in  The  Mistletoe  Bough,  yet  her  father  did  not  seem  to 
be  smoking. 

"  Not  at  all,  Polly,"  he  persisted,  "  it's  just  the  right  grotesque 
spirit." 

"  There'll  be  a  laugh." 

"  The  one  thing  Hamlet  needs.  Even  the  ghost  don't  carry 
it  off." 

"  You'd  better  give  me  the  line,"  persisted  Miss  Flippance. 
"  It'll  come  better  in  the  mad  scene." 

"  Well,  we'll  talk  about  it — I  think  you've  seen  our  American 
friend  before." 

"  Before  and  behind,"  said  Miss  Flippance  viciously,  a  scowl 
traversing  her  pockmarks.  "  And  since  he  left  me  in  the  lurch, 
I  wasn't  sorry  to  think  I'd  seen  the  back  of  him." 

"  But  as  Miss  Quar — as  the  Carrier  hadn't  got  your  drumstick, 
there  was  nothing  to  return  for,"  apologized  Will. 

"  Then  why  have  you  ?  "  she  snapped,  and  closed  the  door 
behind  her  with  a  similar  snap. 


SUNDAY  AT  GHIPSTONE  219 

VI 

"  Polly's  in  a  pet,"  commented  her  parent.  "  She  don't  like 
being  worried  by  actors  in  search  of  jobs,  specially  on  Sundays. 
It's  your  hairless  phiz,  you  know." 

"  But  I'm  not  an  actor." 

"  Of  course  not — she  ought  to  have  seen  you  haven't  the  face 
— only  the  razor :  ha,  ha,  ha  !  " 

Will  was  vaguely  resentful.  "  But  I  dare  say  I  could  black 
my  face." 

"  There's  more  to  the  drama  than  Othello,  and  more  to  OtheUo 
than  burnt  cork."  And  Mr.  Flippance  laughed  again  as  he 
dropped  into  his  wooden  arm-chair  and  resumed  his  breakfast  at 
a  little  table  'twixt  the  bed-canopy  and  the  window.  "  Sit 
down,  won't  you  ?  Excuse  my  back — I  can  hear  all  you  say 
behind  it.     Ha,  ha  !     That's  another  good  gag,  eh  ?  " 

Will,  glancing  round,  saw  that  the  chair  not  occupied  by  his 
host  was  hopelessly  littered  by  his  garments,  mixed  with  papers  : 
he  therefore  dropped  on  the  high  four-poster — it  was  now  made — 
and  cleared  his  throat  for  action. 

"  You'll  have  a  drop  of  something,"  Mr.  Flippance  threw 
backwards,  mistranslating  the  sounds. 

"  No,  thank  you  !  "  He  must  not  be  bribed  or  drugged,  Will 
felt :  he  had  stern  work  before  him.  It  was  as  well,  however, 
to  placate  the  adversary.  "  Glad  to  hear  the  show's  a  big 
draw,"  he  said. 

"  And  who  told  you  that  ?  " 

"  Er— the  Bradmarsh  Carrier  !  " 

"  Bless  her — she  carries  all  the  lies  I  tell  her." 

"  Aren't  things  rosy  then  ?  " 

"  I  never  lie  on  Sundays.  Ha,  ha,  ha  !  Perhaps  it's  just  as 
well  Jinny  won't  do  business  with  me  to-day.  No,  old  man,  I 
ought  to  be  middling  mollancholy,  as  they  say  here.  But  I'm  as 
happy  as  the  day  is  long — and  it's  getting  longer  every  day."  He 
drained  his  coffee-cup  voluptuously.  "  Never  mind  my  business 
— what's  yours  ?  " 

"  Mine  ?     I  haven't  come  on  business." 

"  Then  you  must  have  a  brandy."  He  reached  out  and  pulled 
the  green  bell-rope. 

"  No  thank  you.  You  see — "  Will  swung  his  legs  hesitatingly. 
"  Surely  you  don't  think  she  ought  to  carry  lies ?  " 


220  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Who  ?  " 

"  The  Bradmarsh  Carrier." 

"  Jinny  !     She  has  to  carry  anything — at  the  proper  tariff." 

"  But  is  it  fair  to  her  ?  " 

"  If  you  mean  our  doing  bumper  business,  she  don't  know  it's 
a  lie,  and  her  teUing  it  helps  to  make  it  true.  Why,  you  were 
itching  to  see  the  show  yourself,  as  soon  as  you  heard  other  fools 
were  flocking."  He  turned  a  grinning  face.  "  Come  now, 
confess." 

"  I  didn't  come  to  see  the  show,"  Will  contradicted,  feeling 
vaguely  bafHed. 

"  Of  course  not,  being  Sunday.  But  what  did  you  come  for  ? 
Cut  the  cackle  and  come  to  the  'osses." 

"  I  will,"  he  said  eagerly.     "  I  hear  you  want  to  buy  one." 

Mr.  Flippance  swung  round,  chair  and  all.  "  Then  you  have 
come  on  business  !  " 

"  No,  I  haven't." 

"  Well,  have  you  got  a  horse  \  " 

"  No,  but  I  could  get  one." 

"  And  you  don't  call  that  business  !  " 

"  I  didn't  mean  to —  !  "  W^ill  was  getting  embarrassed.  "  It 
just  slipped  out.     What  I  want  to  ask  of  you  is " 

"  Where  the  devil  is  that  waiter  ?  "  broke  in  the  Showman, 
reaching  for  the  cord  again. 

*'  What  I  mean  is,"  said  Will,  determined  to  get  it  out  before 
the  waiter  popped  up,  "  that  there's  a  girl  you're  leading  into 
brazen  courses  !  " 

"  A  girl !  Me  !  "  Mr.  Flippance  pulled  himself  angrily  to  his 
feet,  and  stood  glaring  at  Will,  with  the  snapped  bell-cord  in  his 
hand  like  a  green  serpent.  "  You  son  of  Ananias,  if  you've 
listened  to  any  of  those  scandal-mongering  swine  you  ought  to  be 
jolly  well  ashamed  of  yourself.  There  isn't  a  cleaner  man — for 
a  widower — in  all  the  circuit.  Why,  I  could  pile  up  the  dollars 
— as  you  call  it — if  I'd  only  darken  my  tent  a  bit,  so  that  the 
lovers  of  the  drama  could  go  rubbing  their  noses  and  licking  one 
another  like  the  calves  in  the  next  field.  But  there  isn't  a 
brighter  show  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Besides,  my  girls  are 
all  wood — there's  not  a  flesh  and  blood  female  with  me  except 
Polly,  and  she's  my  own  daughter,  born  on  the  right  side  of  the 
blanket,  too.  Which  is  more  than  can  be  said  for  all  of  us. 
What  may  be  your  name,  now  ?  " 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  221 

"  What  has  my  name  to  do  with  it  ?  "     He  got  off  the  bed. 

"  What  has  his  name  to  do  with  it  ?  "  asked  Mr.  Flippance  of 
the  waiter,  who  now  shot  in  with  a  well-divined  bottle  and 
appurtenances.^ 

"  Beg  pardon,  sir  ?  " 

*'  And  so  you  may,  you  son  of  a  slug.  Here,  take  this  rope 
and  hang  yourself  with  it  1  So  you  won't  tell  your  name,  you 
son  of  a  flea,"  he  went  on,  when  the  waiter  had  spirited  off 
the  breakfast-tray.  "  Well,  here's  my  back — bite  away."  And 
with  a  high  tragic  gesture  he  turned  to  open  the  brandy-bottle. 

"  I'm  not  a  backbiter,"  said  Will  angrily.  "  I'm  a  front- 
puncher,  and  my  name  is " 

"  Never  mind  your  name.  I  accepted  you.  You  came  like 
the  spirit  of  the  May  Day — mixed  with  the  Mayflower,  I 
opened  my  heart  to  you.  I  gave  you  three  names.  I  was  Duke, 
I  was  Anthony  Flippance,  I  was  Tony  Flip."  He  gurgled  the 
brandy  into  his  glass.  "  I  demanded  no  references.  I  entrusted 
you  with  posters  for  my  daughter." 

"  Which  I  delivered  honestly." 

"  But  anonymously." 

'*  My  name  is " 

"  Hush  !  Not  for  a  million  pounds  would  I  hear  it  now.  But 
the  girl's  name  ?  "  he  turned  round,  glass  in  hand.  "  That  at 
least  I  beg." 

"  I've  mentioned  it  already.     It's — it's  the  Carrier." 

"  Jinny  !  "  Tony  Flip  burst  into  an  explosive  laugh  of  relief. 
"  Fancy  calling  Jinny  a  girl !  " 

"  And  what  else  would  you  call  her  ?  " 

"  What  you  just  called  her — the  Carrier." 

"  Then  if  she  is  a  carrier,  why  should  you  degrade  her  into  a 
horse-broker  ?  " 

"  Oh,  that's  all  you  mean,  is  it  ?  " 

"  Isn't  that  enough  ?  " 

"  Don't  be  an  idiot.     Here,  have  a  drink." 

Will  waved  the  glass  away. 

"  Would  you  like  to  send  your  daughter  bargaining  among  a 
lot  of  rough  men  ?  " 

Tony  grinned.  "  I  don't  think  Polly  'ud  mind  the  men.  It's 
the  horse  she'd  come  a  cropper  over.  Jinny's  had  a  long  experi- 
ance  of  horses,  and  she's  smart  enough  to  buy  anything.  If  I 
wanted  the  moon,  she'd  get  it  for  me — and  cheap  too  !  " 


222  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  And  why  can't  you  buy  your  own  horses  ?  " 

"  Why  ?  Because  I'm  a  child  of  nature — a  simple  player — 
who  wears  his  heart  on  his  sleeve  for  daws  to  peck  at.  My  last 
mare  crocked  up  in  a  week  in  the  flower  of  her  youth — seems  to 
have  been  bought  in  a  knacker's  yard,  shaved  and  singed  and 
brushed  and  combed  till  she  was  as  shiny  as  a  Derby  winner. 
They  gingered  her  ears  and  jaws  and  cayenne-peppered  her 
nostrils  till  she  seemed  clothed  in  thunder,  like  the  war-horse  in 
the  Bible." 

Will  smiled  despite  himself.  "  And  you  expect  a  girl  to  see 
through  all  that !     Look  here,  I'll  buy  your  horse." 

Mr.  Flippance  paused  in  the  act  of  imbibing.  "  Oh,  there  we 
are,"  he  said,  looking  shrewd.  "  Want  to  cut  out  Jinny's 
business  !  " 

Will's  cheeks  became  chromatically  indistinguishable  from  his 
hair. 

"  Me  !     Do  you  think  I  want  your  dirty  commission  ?  " 

"  And  do  you  think  I  want  your  stinking  horse  ?  Why  the 
devil  do  you  come  interfering  ?  " 

WiU  was  silent.     Tony  finished  his  glass  like  a  victor. 

"  If  it  ain't  the  commission,  what  are  you  after  ?  " 

"  That's  my  business,"  said  Will  sullenly. 

"  Just  what  I  said  !  "  crowed  Tony.  "  But  I'd  rather  pay 
Jinny  a  quid  than  you  a  bob.  She's  got  her  old  grandfather 
to  keep  !  " 

"  Yes,  and  he's  as  selfish  and  inconsiderate  as  you.  But  she 
shanH  get  you  a  horse,  and  there's  an  end  of  it." 

"  Oho  !  "  Brandy  had  made  him  genial  again.  "  Who's 
going  to  prevent  it  ?  Now  don't  say  '  /  will,'  because  that's  in 
our  dramas — attitude  and  all.  Though  judging  by  the  way 
you've  been  going  on,  Mr.  Anon,  I'm  not  so  sure  you  wouldn't 
make  an  actor  !  Perhaps  Polly  smelt  right  and  you  are  one  after 
all.  But  don't  you  come  disturbing  my  peace  of  mind,  you  son 
of  a  star.   Wild  horses  wouldn't  drag  me  back  to  the  legitimate." 

"  We're  talldng  of  caravan  horses,"  said  Will,  at  once  mystified 
and  mollified. 

"  You  seem  to  know  all  about  it.  I  guess  you  ran  a  show 
yourself  in  the  States." 

Will  smiled  darkly.     "  That's  not  your  affair." 

"  But  it  might  be.  I'm  not  above  a  partner  with  capital. 
Duke's  Marionettes   are  getting  shabby.     The  ghost  is  nearly 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  223 

black  ;  Ophelia  wants  a  new  coat  of  paint.  Harlequin  is  out  of 
joint  and  the  Clown's  cheeks  are  worn  white.  And  we've  got 
too  few  characters  and  too  many  plays.  The  public  are  on  to 
it  when  they  see  Hamlet  turning  up  again  in  The  Beggar  of 
Bethnal  Green.  Some  new  scenery  too  would  smarten  up  the 
show.  I  shan't  expect  you  to  pull  the  strings — just  put  up  the 
chinkers  and  w^e'U  divvy  up,  you  and  me  and  Polly.  Now  don't 
say  '  No  '  too  quick.  ^  Drink  it  over."  And,  beaming  beneficence, 
he  again  tendered  Will  the  other  glass. 

This  time  Will  took  it,  hearing  himself  clink  it  against  Tony's 
through  a  daze,  as  he  asked  himself  whether,  after  all,  this  notion 
— utterly  fantastic  and  unexpected  as  it  was — mightn't  be  as 
good  a  way  as  any  other  of  investing  his  ninety  pounds  :  he 
would  certainly  be  in  a  position  then  to  stop  Jinny  from  buying 
the  horse  ! 

"  Well,  what  do  you  say  ?  "  cried  Tony. 

"  But  you  don't  know  my  name  ?  "  murmured  Will,  with  th-e 
stir  of  adventure  and  brandy  in  his  veins. 

"  Pooh  !  What's  in  a  name  ?  A  nose  by  any  other  name 
would  swell  as  red."  And,  laughing,  he  clapped  Will  on  the 
shoulder.  "We'll  spruce  up  the  tent  too,  and  slick  up  the 
caravan — a  dingy  old  hearse  ain't  the  best  advertisement  on  a 
tour.  And  why  shouldn't  you  take  some  of  the  parts  ?  Pity  to 
waste  your  twang.  We'd  get  some  American  figures  made — 
cowboys  and  slave-dealers  and  such — and  spice  our  ghosts  and 
goblins  with  Colonel  Bowie  knives  and  Yankee  yumour.  We 
might  even  turn  the  bridegroom  in  The  Mistletoe  Bough  into  a 
rich  New-Yorker,  and  make  the  bride  moulder  away  in  an 
American  trunk.  There's  a  fortune  in  it.  I  don't  mean  in  the 
trunk — ^ha,  ha,  ha  !  " 

With  a  last  instinct  of  sanity  Will  observed  maliciously  that  it 
was  Sunday.  He  merely  meant  to  remind  ^Tony  that  that  was 
his  day  for  truth.  But  the  Showman's  glass  nearly  fell  from  his 
fingers. 

"  You  too  !  "  he  said.  "  And  that  Jinny — as  lively  a  girl  as 
ever  stepped.  And  Mother  Gander — as  buxom  a  landlady  as 
ever  bussed  a  bagman.  What's  come  over  the  East  Anglian 
circuit  ?     And  I  took  you  for  a  man  of  the  world." 

Unwilling  to  repudiate  that  status,  Will  remarked  flabbily  that 
precisely  as  a  man  of  the  world  he  didn't  see  any  money  in 
marionettes. 


224  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  No  money  !  "  Mr.  Flippance  swelled  with  indignation  as  he 
pointed  out  that  Drury  Lane  and  the  mines  of  Golconda  were  not 
in  it  with  marionettes,  properly  equipped  and  spring-cleaned  ;  the 
public  was  simply  panting  for  high-class  puppets. 

It  goaded  Will  to  emphasize  his  meaning.  "  Is  this  your 
Sunday  talk  or  your  week-day  talk  ?  "  he  interrupted  dryly. 
"  Didn't  you  just  tell  me  that  you're  doing  badly  ?  " 

Mr.  Flippance  admitted  it  almost  without  a  wince.  And 
had  he  not  given  the  reason  ?  To  take  money  out  you 
must  put  money  in.  "I  tell  you  there's  a  fortune  in  it,"  he 
repeated. 

"  Sunk  ?  "  asked  Will  blandly.  He  added  vengefuUy  that  he 
would  consider  a  partnership  when  the  stuffed  elephant  came 
home  from  the  Crystal  Palace.  Tony,  in  crimson  comprehension, 
rushed  at  the  litter  on  the  spare  chair  and  dragged  out  a  news- 
paper from  under  the  neckties.  "  Read  that !  "  he  said 
sublimely,  "  the  Essex  County  Chronicle !  "  And  his  semi- 
gilded  forefinger  indicated  a  heavily  blued  passage.  "  Our 
readers  will  be  interested  to  know,"  read  Will,  "  that  it  is  a 
local  showman  who  supplied  the  great  stuffed  elephant  that 
holds  Her  Majesty's  gorgeous  howdah  in  Mr.  Paxton's  marvel- 
lous glass " 

He  dropped  the  paper.  "  I  beg  your  pardon  !  "  he  said,  too 
disconcerted  to  realize  that  the  "  local "  showman  need  not 
necessarily  be  Tony  Flip.  "  But  I  really  would  rather  not  talk 
business  to-day,  and  I  don't  know  anything  about  yours — that 
wasn't  my  line  in  the  States.     I  never  even  saw  a  puppet-show 

in  my  life,  outside  Punch  and  Judy.     A  real  live  drama  now " 

he  concluded  vaguely,  meaning  that  he  had  at  least  seen  real 
plays,  and  utterly  unforeseeing  the  effect  the  remark  would  have 
upon  his  host. 

For  Tony  Flip  bounded  like  a  large  mechanical  toy,  plumped 
down  again  in  his  chair,  turned  its  back  and  his  own  to  his 
guest,  and  stuffing  jewelled  forefingers  into  both  his  ears  cried 
out  :   "  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan  !     Avaunt  !     Avaunt !  " 

VII 

"  Me,  Satan  !  "  said  Will,  astonished.  "  Who  ever  heard  of 
Satan  refusing  to  do  business  on  Sunday  ?  " 

If  his  last  innocent  remark  had  produced  convulsive  effects  in 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  225 

a  perpendicular  direction,  this  set  Tony  Flip  rolling  from  side  to 
side  in  his  chair.  "  Yankee  yumour,"  he  gasped  between  the 
spasms.  "  Lord  !  "  he  said  at  last.  "  You'll  drive  me  to  set 
up  a  minstrel  show,  only  to  get  that  in." 

Will,  though  puzzled,  could  hardly  help  otiag  flattered  by 
these  proofs  of  his  facetious  talents.  It  was  strange,  he  thought, 
how  different  the  conversation  went  when  he  was  with  Jinny. 
Then  the  laugh  seemed  always  at  his  expense. 

"  I  should  think  a  minstrel  show  would  be  more  fun,"  he 
observed. 

Tony  veered  round  with  his  arm-chair,  ceased  to  laugh,  and 
regarded  Will  with  large,  reproachful  eyes.  "  And  you  cant 
about  Sunday  !  "  he  said.  "  And  then  to  come  tempting  me 
back  to  that  Witches'  Sabbath  of  a  profession." 

"  Nigger  minstrels  ?  "  Will  murmured,  more  dazed  than 
ever. 

"  As  if  nigger  minstrels  weren't  half-way  to  your  Othello.  No, 
you  son  of  Satan.  To  hell  with  your  capital !  Didn't  you  hear 
me  say  ditto  to  the  rat-catcher  ?  They  are  dens  of  the  devil — 
theatres." 

"  Then  why  do  you  run  one  ?  " 

"  Me  !  I  don't  class  my  show  as  a  theatre.  Marionettes  keep 
themselves  to  themselves." 

"  But  you  play  Shakespeare." 

Tony  held  up  his  fat  glittering  forefinger.  "  We  pull  Shake- 
speare's strings — Polly  and  me.  But  there's  no  actors  the 
public  can  drag  before  the  curtain." 

Will  admitted  the  difference,  but  not  the  moral  distinction. 

"  You  ever  met  any  actors  and  actresses  ?  "  said  Tony. 

Will  could  not  pretend  to  that  privilege — if  Mr.  Flippance  and 
his  daughter  refused  to  be  counted — and  there  was  a  long  silence, 
in  which  Tony  seemed  to  the  outer  eye  to  keep, sips  of  brandy- 
and-water  lingering  on  his  palate,  though  he  was  really — it 
transpired — chewing  the  cud  of  bitter  memories.  For  suddenly 
he  burst  out  :  "  I  lived  all  my  life  with  'em.  I've  managed  'em 
for  years — or,  rather,  failed  to  manage  'em.  Born  in  a  Green 
Room,  rocked  in  a  Witches'  Cauldron,  and  baptized  in  grease- 
paint. My  ma  was  a  leading  lady — she  played  heroines  and  my 
father  wrote  the  melodramas.  And  they  know  a  good  melodrama 
at  the  '  Eagle.'  " 

"  Yes — Fve  heard  of  the  '  Eagle  '  in  London,"  said  Will. 


226  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Ah,  you  know  it  by  the  song,  perhaps  : 

Uf  and  down  the  City  Road, 

In  and  out  the  '  Eagle/ 
Thafs  the  way  the  money  goes, 

Pop  goes  the  weasel  I  " 

"  I  never  heard  a  weasel  go  pop,"  Will  laughed.  "  It  was  the 
mouse,  if  anything,  though  I  did  once  see  a  stoat  crack  up  before 
a  cat." 

Tony's  mien  relaxed  in  a  faint  smile. 

The  weasel  was  a  tailor's  iron,  he  explained,  pawned  by  the 
reckless  snip  to  raise  money  for  treating  the  damsels  who  danced 
with  him  on  that  open-air  platform  to  which  the  "  Eagle's  " 
audience  streamed  out  betwixt  the  drama  and  the  farce.  He 
added  simply  :  "  That's  where  my  Don  Juan  of  a  dad  first 
clapped  eyes  on  a  girl,  pretty,  of  course,  but  with  no  more  acting 
in  her  than  Mother  Gander.  Yet,  would  you  believe  it,  he 
shoved  her  into  the  lead  instead  of  ma,  and  wrote  a  piece  all  for 
her,  and  what  was  worse  it  was  a  big  go.  That  was  the  last  straw, 
and  clasping  me  to  her  wounded  bosom,  she  left  him,  poor  ma." 

"  I  should  have  thought  she'd  ha'  left  him  sooner,"  murmured 
Will,  vaguely  uncomfortable  under  these  frank  domestic  revela- 
tions. 

"  It  isn't  so  easy  to  leave  a  man  you're  not  married  to  !  "  said 
Tony. 

Will  gasped. 

"  Ah,  that  surprises  you  ?  "  said  the  Showman  complacently. 
With  a  cautious  glance  at  his  daughter's  door  of  communication, 
he  produced  two  cigars  furtively  from  his  washstand  drawer — 
was  he  forbidden  to  smoke.  Will  wondered.  "  You'll  find  that 
good,"  he  said,  pressing  one  upon  his  guest. 

"  You  see,"  he  explained,  as  they  puffed  at  these  excellent 
weeds  in  a  new  intimacy,  "  if  a  woman  leaves  her  husband  it 
makes  a  scandal  he  don't  like,  whereas  a  man  that's  not  tied  is 
only  too  glad  to  be  rid  of  her.  Oh,  I  ain't  defending  ma,  mind 
vou — it  only  shows  she  was  a  born  actress.  I  dare  say  she'd 
only  sucked  up  to  pa  to  get  parts.  But  when  he  unstarred  her, 
fine  emotional  actress  as  she  was,  she  could  never  get  her  foot  in 
again  in  London,  to  play  leads  I  mean,  for  she  was  too  proud 
to  play  anything  else.  '  I  can  play  anything  except  second 
fiddle,'  she  used  to  say,  and  rather  than  cave  in,  she  married  a 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  227 

fifth-rate  manager,  called  Jim  Flippance,  who  had  only  a  fit-up 
theatre  (carries  its  own  props,  scenery,  and  proscenium,  but  not 
open-air,  you  know),  and  made  him  put  up  pieces  with  a  kid  in 
'em  to  keep  me  out  of  mischief,  but  it  wasn't  long  before  I  soared 
out  of  the  parental  nest,  and  by  the  time  they  both  joined  the 
majority,  poor  old  birds,  I'd  been  leading  man  or  manager  or 
both  in  half  a  dozen  theatres,  two  of  'em  London  housts."  Will 
receiving  this  information  with  a  silent  curl  of  his  smoke,  as 
though  it  were  another  elephantine  claim,  Mr.  Flippance  added 
vehemently :  "  Real  London  theatres,  mind  you,  not  those 
swindling  gaffs  for  paying  amateurs  described  by  Boz — that's 
Charles  Dickens,  you  know.     You've  read  Dickens  ?  " 

Will  shook  his  head.  "  Too  heavy  and  high-class  for  me. 
They  don't  like  him  in  the  States  either — I've  heard  he  wrote  a 
piece  against  them " 

"  Ah,  but  you  should  hear  him  read  his  *  Christmas  Carol ! ' 
There's  a  wasted  actor  for  you  !  Lord,  if  I'd  had  the  running 
of  that  chap  1  " 

Will  was  more  interested  in  the  girl  who  cut  out  Mr.  Flippance's 
ma.  "  I  hope  your  father — your  pa — "  he  substituted  politely, 
"  married  his  new  flame,"  he  said.  Even  through,  the  glow  of 
the  brandy  and  the  blur  of  the  smoke  he  was  dismayed  by  this 
dishevelled  life. 

"  How  could  he  ?  He  had  a  wife  in  Cork.  Yes,  I  forgot  to 
say  pa  was  Irish.  I've  always  gone  by  my  mother's  married 
name,  but  you  can  have  my  father's  name  if  you  wish  !  " 

"  Not  for  a  million  pounds,"  said  Will. 

"  You  Yankee  yumorist  !  "  Tony  blew  a  playful  puff  of  smoke 
at  him.  "  Well,  you'll  see  it  if  you  come  across  the  old  '  Eagle  ' 
playbills  or  those  of  Flippance's  Fit-Up  for  that  matter,  for  we 
did  all  pa's  plays — ma  had  played  them  so  long  she  knew  all 
the  parts.  Pa  sent  her  a  lawyer's  letter — for  she  didn't  even 
trouble  to  change  the  titles  or  the  author's  name — but  she  defied 
him  to  wash  his  dirty  linen  in  court,  knowing  how  virtuous 
his  '  Eagle '  public  was,  and  that  it  might  ha'  ruined  him  and 
his  moral  melodramas." 

"  They  seem  a  funny  lot — stage  folk,"  Will  commented. 

"  Bless  you,  there's  no  bearing  of  'em." 

Will,  relieved,  said  he  was  glad  Mr.  Flippance  didn't  approve 
of  such  morals. 

"  Morals  !  "     Tony  glared  at  him.     "  Who's  talking  of  morals  : 


228  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Men  will  be  men  and  women  women  whether  they're  pro's  or 
public.     You  didn't  find  America  a  Sunday-school,  I  reckon  ?  " 

Will,  coughing  over  liis  liquor,  supposed  a  man  could  have  his 
fun  anywhere. 

"  That's  what  I  say  !  "  said  the  Showman.  "  And  on  the 
other  hand  I've  known  actors  as  respectable  as  your  rat-catcher. 
I'm  one  of  'em  myself,  as  I  told  you  just  now.  I'd  seen  too 
many  dead  flies  in  the  honey — and  my  Polly's  as  pure  as  her 
poor  dead  mother.  No,  it  ain't  their  morals  that  bother  me,  it's 
their  ways.  Holy  Moses  1  To  think  of  the  time  I  had  travelling 
round  managing  these  sons  of  dragons  and  hell-cats  !  I  envied 
ma  and  Flippance  in  the  churchyard  under  their  favourable 
stone  notices.  The  jealousies !  The  cat-and-dog  bickerings ! 
The  screams  and  hysterics  !  Who  should  play  this  or  that,  who 
should  be  largest  on  the  programmes  and  posters,  who  should 
stand  in  the  limelight,  who  should  take  the  call — they  never 
quarrelled  who  should  take  the  bird  :  that's  the  hiss  in  our 
lingo.  They  were  always  hissing  at  one  another,  or  at  the  poor 
manager,  that's  me  !  I've  seen  the  leading  man  and  the  leading 
lady  take  their  call  hand  in  hand,  and  the  moment  the  curtain 
was  down  resume  spitting  fire  at  each  other.  It  wasn't  that 
they  had  any  vanity,  they  said,  it  was  only  that  their  position 
demanded  they  should  take  calls  singly  or  be  printed  larger  than 
each  other.  Cocks  and  catamarans !  I  tell  you  if  I  hadn't 
swopped  with  Duke  for  his  marionettes,  I  should  have  had  little 
rose-bushes  growing  out  of  me  now,  and  that  favourable  stone 
notice  over  me.     Oh,  the  peace  of  it — it'b  Sunday  all  the  week !  " 

"  I  can  see  marionettes  would  be  easier  to  manage,"  said  Will, 
smiling. 

"  Ah,  but  to  feel  it  as  I  do,  you  must  have  lived  through  it." 
Mr.  Flippance  rose  in  his  emotion  and  paced  animatedly.  "  You 
must  have  had  a  hornets'  nest  for  your  seat  and  a  brood  of  vipers 
in  your  bosom,  and  shared  diggings  with  the  Furies.  Oh,  my 
radiant  juvenile,  your  sun-coloured  hair  would  have  been  snow 
if  you  had  gone  through  what  I  have  !  If  you'd  had  Ophelia  in 
hysterics  and  Hamlet  in  liquor  and  even  the  ghost  hardly  able 
to  walk,  and  the  call-boy  crying  the  curtain  was  up,  and  the 
audience  stamping  and  whistling,  and  short-tempered  people  at 
the  box-office  demanding  their  money  back,  you'd  be  able  to 
measure  the  feeling  of  thankfulness  that  comes  over  the  cockles 
of  my  heart  when  I  stand  in  my  theatre  and  see  my  leading  lady 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  229 

sitting  so  angelic  on  her  wires  unable  to  move  hand  or  foot 
without  me,  or  when  I  jerk  my  leading  man  out  of  the  centre  of 
the  stage  all  in  a  heavenly  calm.  And  to  see  the  curtain  come 
up  and  dowr^  with  nobody  scuffling  behind  it  to  bob  and  smirk — 
oh,  the  Jerusalem  restfulness  !  There  mayn't  be  as  much  rhino 
in  marionettes  as  in  flesh  and  blood " 

"  You  just  said  there  was  more,"  Will  reminded  him,  unkindly. 

"  I  meant  compared  with  the  capital  put  in,"  said  Tony, 
without  turning  a  hair.  "  You  don't  risk  much  when  you  don't 
have  to  pay  your  actors.  But  Duke  wasn't  mercenary,  and  it 
was  the  glory  that  appealed  to  him,  poor  man.  He'd  inherited 
the  business,  like  me,  but  he'd  always  been  ambitious  after  high 
art,  he  told  me,  and  Flippance's  Fit-Up  was  his  boyhood's 
dreami.  We  did  the  swop  over  mulled  claret  last  Christmas  Eve 
in  this  very  inn.  Peace  and  goodwill,  thinks  I,  as  we  clinked 
tumblers  on  the  deal.  You've  got  the  goodwill,  but  peace,  no, 
that  you'll  never  see  again." 

Will  smiled.  ''  I'll  really  have  to  come  and  see  those  blessed 
puppets,"  he  said,  as  the  Showman  replenished  the  glasses. 

Tony  replied  that  he  should  see  the  whole  boiling  of  them 
either  before  or  after  the  show,  neatly  packed  in  their  big  box. 
**  And  if  there's  any  you'd  like  to  kick,  you're  welcome,"  he  said. 

"  What !     Damage  your  property  ?  " 

"  It  would  work  off  my  bitter  memories." 

"  But  they're  not  the  real  live  actors." 

"  No — there's  the  pity  !  "  said  Tony.  "  But  they  look  so 
real — they're  life-size,  you  know — that  I  sometimes  yell  at  'em 
and  abuse  'em  just  for  the  satisfaction  of  their  not  answering 
back.  And  the  leading  lady  looks  as  if  she  had  a  tongue  to  her — 
I  promise  you.  A  tongue — but  thank  the  Lord  it  can  only  talk 
Shakespeare  or  noble  sentiments — can't  even  nag  the  manage- 
ment for  a  new  dress.  As  for  the  juvenile  lead,  I  can't  help 
tweaking  his  nose  sometimes  for  the  sake  of  auld  lang  syne. 
Polly  can't  understand  my  spoiling  his  beauty — I  can't  make 
her  see  I'm  getting  a  bit  of  my  own  back — and  when  she  catches 
me  punching  the  low  comedian's  head  with  a  boxing-glove  she 
saucers  her  eyes,  as*  though  I  was  going  dotty.  But  she  never 
had  to  manage  'em.  And  I  had  to  travel  'em  too — don't  forget 
that.  Fancy  carting  around  a  menagerie,  all  in  the  same  cage  ! 
But  I  have  my  revenge  when  I  travel  'em  now — into  the  box 
they  go — leads  below  and  the  heavy  man  sitting  on  their  heads, 


230  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

ha,  ha,  ha  ! — and  utilities  and  supers  on  top  of  all !  And  it 
don't  raise  a  whisper.  Talk  of  the  lion  lying  down  with  the 
lamb.  Believe  me,  old  cock,  that  there  millennium  will  never 
come  till  we're  all  on  wires."  He  drew  vigorously  at  the  cigar 
his  eloquence  had  all  but  extinguished. 

"  There's  a  lot  of  the  brutes,"  he  mused  between  the  puffs, 
"  that  don't  know  Tony  Flip's  escaped  out  of  hell,  and  they 
write  and  call  for  engagements — same  as  Polly  thought  you  did — 
and  if  it  isn't  Sunday  I  take  'em  to  see  my  company  and  rub 
their  noses  into  'em,  so  to  speak.  Look  at  'em,  I  say,  every  man 
and  woman  knowing  their  place,  and  when  to  speak  and  when 
to  hold  their  blooming  tongue,  every  one  knowing  their  parts 
too,  which  is  more  than  you  ever  did,  I'll  be  bound.  No  wigs,  no 
make-ups,  no  dresses,  no  young  bloods  or  decrepit  dandies 
coming  behind,  no  prompter,  nobody  missing  their  cue,  or 
unpunctual  or  hysterical.  No  Bardell  versus  Pickwick.  Nobody 
drunk,  married,  divorced,  deceased,  laid  up,  locked  up,  or  run 
over,  between  the  dress  rehearsal  and  the  first  night.  No 
understudies,  eating  their  heads  off  :  in  the  way  when  they're 
not  wanted,  and  missing  their  cues  when  they  are.  No  sore 
throats,  no  funerals  to  go  to,  no  babies  to  get — if  there's  a  baby 
wanted,  I  order  it  from  the  makers.  And  above  all,  my  boy, 
say  I  to  'em,  no  treasury." 

"  What's  that  ?  "  inquired  Will. 

"  What's  that  ?  Well  I'm  blowed.  That's  pay-day.  And 
kindly  note,  I  say  to  'em,  that  lead  don't  get  more  than  utility, 
nor  responsibles  than  walking  gentlemen.  It's  Owenism,  you 
sons  of  Mammon,  I  tell  'em,  sheer  Owenism.  Everybody  getting 
the  same  nothing,  and  nobody  coming  carneying  for  advance 
half-crowns.  As  for  curtain-calls,  the  singing  chambermaid's 
got  the  same  chance  as  Lady  Macbeth.  And  when  it  is  a 
leading  man  that's  come  for  a  berth,  I  take  him  to  the  front  of 
the  booth  where  there's  a  retired  village  idiot  I  picked  up, 
banging  the  drum.  Look  there,  says  I,  he's  not  got  much  brains 
but  he  isn't  wood,  and  that's  the  only  flesh-and-blood  job  I've 
got  left  in  this  blooming  shop.  If  you  like  to  take  it,  w^hy,  in  re- 
cognition of  your  position,  I'll  throw  in  an  extra  naphtha  flare." 

"  And  what  do  they  say  ?  "  laughed  Will. 

"  It  can't  be  repeated  on  a  Sunday  !  But  you  can  picture  'em 
black  in  the  face — all  except  the  nose.  That  gets  redder  than 
ever  !     Hullo,  Charley  !     Come  in  !     Come  in  !  " 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  231 

Through  the  open  door  he  had  caught  sight  of  the  landlord  in 
the  corridor. 

"  Can't  stop,  Tony."  Mr.  Mott  was,  in  fact,  hurrying  to  take 
advantage  of  his  spouse's  return  to  chapel. 

"  Gander-pecked  again,  I  suppose,"  laughed  the  Showman. 
"  Ah,  Charley,  you'd  be  much  happier  if  yoa  had  a  wife  on 
wires." 

"  There  you  go  again  !  "  And  Mr.  Mott,  eager  to  join  old 
pals  at  their  fishing,  sniggered  past,  leaving  a  reek  of  hair-oil. 

"  Poor  chap  !  "  sighed  Tony.  "  But  there's  always  hope  for  a 
man  whose  wife  won't  call  in  a  doctor." 

Will  laughed,  and  cunningly  took  advantage  of  all  this  expan- 
sive geniality  to  escape  from  the  room  and  the  threatened 
transaction  and  to  call  from  the  doorstep  as  he  took  his  farewell, 
"  Then  it's  settled — /  get  the  horse." 

"  If  you  bring  it  into  the  partnership,"  cried  Tony  after  him, 
"  not  otherwise." 

Will  found  himself  waylaid  by  Polly  as  he  passed  her  doorway. 
She  beckoned  him  within  with  a  mysterious,  masterful  forefinger, 
and  he,  seeing  the  moreen  curtains  of  her  four-poster  discreetly 
drawn,  entered,  though  not  without  Puritan  misgivings.  She  drew 
another  curtain  over  the  closed  door  communicating  with  her 
father's  room,  and  turned  the  key.  "  Don't  waste  my  cigar,"  she 
said  as  he  held  it  behind  him.  "  I  can  see  pa's  given  you  one  of 
mine."  And  taking  up  her  glowing  fag-end  from  the  ash-tray, 
she  resumed  her  suction  of  it,  sipping  in  the  intervals  at  a  glass 
of  milk.    "  I  suppose  you  won't  share  my  drink,"  she  said  simply. 

"  No,  thank  you,"  he  said,  hardly  believing  his  eyes,  though  he 
now  understood  whence  came  the  clouds  in  which  he  had  found 
her  mantled.  Perhaps  she  was  really  a  man  in  disguise,  despite 
her  long  ear-rings.  But  then,  would  ever  a  male  take  milk  with 
his  cigar  ?  What  with  tobacco  and  horsiness,  what  was  the  sex 
coming  to  ?  And  yet  there  seemed  something  symbolic  in  this 
combination  of  stimulants,  this  masculinity  mitigated  by  milk  ! 
"  What  do  you  want  to  say  to  me  ?  "  he  asked,  keeping  the 
front  door  open  with  his  hand. 

"  What's  this  about  a  partnership  ?  "  she  said  softly.  "  I 
couldn't  help  hearing." 

"  Don't  ask  me,"  said  Will  in  tones  hushed  as  cautiously. 
"  Mr.  Flippance  did  speak  of  it,  but  Fve  never  thought  of  the 
theatre  as  a  business,  only  as  a  spree." 


232  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Did  he  want  you  to  take  a  theatre  ?  "  she  asked  anxiously. 

"  Good  heavens,  no  !     He  called  it  hell  !  " 

Miss  Flippance  smiled  sadly.  "  That's  his  way  of  consoling 
himself.  He's  dying  to  get  a  stock  company  again.  But  he 
■mustn^t  have  even  a  theatre  for  amateurs.  I'd  fight  it  tooth 
and  nail." 

"  It's  bad  for  him,  I  know." 

"  It's  bad  for  w^,"  said  Miss  Flippance.  She  puffed  out  a 
cloud.  "  You  see,  there'd  be  no  place  for  me.  I  can  wipe  most 
actresses  off  the  stage,  but  I'm  not  pretty — at  least,  not  since 
my  illness — and  the  public  won't  have  me — except  at  the  piano 
where  I  turn  my  back  on  them.  Plain  actresses  must  be  heard 
and  not  seen." 

''  Oh  !  "     Will  was  taken  aback  by  such  candour. 

"  Besides,  one  of  the  women  would  probably  entangle  him  into 
marriage.  I  don't  mind  his  having  a  wife  on  wires  !  "  And  a 
smile  came  travelling  over  the  pits  of  her  face. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  he  really  wants  to  go  back  to  hell*?  " 
said  Will,  dazed. 

"  Don't  the  moths  after  you've  saved  'em  from  the  lamp  ? 
And  it  was  no  easy  task  saving  him.  Christmas  after  Christmas 
I  used  to  jest:  'Peace  and  goodwill  indeed  !  You'll  never  have 
peace  till  you've  got  rid  of  your  goodwill.'  " 

"  But  that's  what  he  says  himself,"  said  Will  naively.  "  So 
he  can't  be  craving  to  go  back — it's  the  marionettes  he  wanted 
me  to  stand  in  with." 

"  That's  all  my  eye.  He  don't  know  how  happy  he  really  is 
nowadays,  playing  all  the  men's  parts.  That  was  always  the 
trouble  in  a  real  theatre,  especially  when  he  was  cock-of-the-walk 
— ^he  never  could  make  up  his  mind  which  part  he  wanted.  First 
he'd  try  one,  and  then  think  another  was  better  and  throw  it 
up  in  the  middle  and  take  away  the  other  man's  part.  Nobody 
likes  to  give  up  a  half-digested  part,  and  it  doesn't  make  things 
easier  when,  after  all,  you  get  it  back  again.  Imagine  the 
ructions  he  was  always  making,  and  I'm  not  going  to  have  it  all 
over  again.  He's  got  all  the  parts  now,  and  so  it's  going  to 
stay."  With  which  ultimatum  she  held  out  her  hand  and 
gripped  him  with  what  he  felt  a  manly  clasp,  and  an  honest. 
"  Don't  you  be  his  partner,"  she  counselled.  *'  He's  lost  all  his 
own  money  and  it's  not  likely  he'd  multiply  yours.  He  might 
have  been  a  big  London  p-ctov  or  manager,  but  the  Bible  sized 


SUNDAY  AT  CHIPSTONE  233 

him  up  before  he  was  born.  '  Unstable  as  water,  thou  shalt  not 
excel.'  If  only  at  least  one  can  keep  him  to  water  !  No,  you 
stick  to  your  cash.  There's  no  money  in  the  show  for  more  than 
him  and  me — my  last  jew^ellery  will  have  to  go  for  the  horse— 
and  if  you've  really  got  the  dollars,  he'd  have  a  theatre,  with 
you  as  juvenile  lead,  before  you  could  say  Jack  Robinson,  and 
then  he'd  steal  your  part  and  drive  you  to  drink." 

Will  replied  firmly,  still  holding  her  hand,  that  he  was  going 
to  put  his  money  into  farming,  and  by  the  way,  w^ould  she 
countermand  that  order  to  the  Carrier  for  the  horse  ? 

"  Oh,  but  we  must  have  a  horse,"  said  Polly. 

"  Quite  so,  but  why  through  Jinny  ?  "  He  was  prepared 
himself,  he  explained,  to  get  them  the  best  animal  at  the  lowest 
price. 

"  And  for  what  commission  ?  "  she  queried. 

"  For  love  !  "  said  Will. 

Polly  withdrew  her  hand.  "  No,  thank  you.  We'd  best  let  it 
go  through  Jinny — like  everything  else." 


CHAPTER  VII 
COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS 

Among  the  rest  a  shepherd^  though  hut  youngs 
Tet  harterCd  to  his  pife^  with  all  the  skill 
His  few  years  could,  began  to  Jit  his  quill, 

Willie  he  hight,   .  .  . 

Fair  was  the  day,  hut  fairer  was  the  maid 
Who  that  day^s  morn  into  the  green-woods  strayed. 
Sweet  was  the  air,  but  sweeter  was  her  breathing, 
Such  rare  perfumes  the  roses  are  bequeathing. 

Browne,  "  Britannia's  Pastorals." 


It  was  the  shepherd-cowman,  and  not  Jinny,  who  deUvered  the 
horn  to  Will.  She  had  "  happened  of  him,"  Master  Peartree 
explained  tediously,  in  the  remote  field  to  which  he  had  taken 
the  sheep  to  feed  off  the  winter  barley.  "  Powerfully  trumpeting  " 
for  him  with  it  just  when  he  was  looking  for  fly,  when  indeed 
in  the  very  act  of  discovering  a  maggoty  rump,  she  had  besought 
him  to  convey  that  "  liddle  ole  horn,"  she  being  so  late  and 
Gran'fer  likely  to  be  "  in  a  taking." 

Now  this  "  liddle  ole  horn  " — when  Will  saw  Master  Peartree 
and  his  sheep-dog  coming  along  in  the  evening  light — he  took  to 
be  the  shepherd's  crook  or  his  great  umbrella  folded,  so  lengthy 
did  it  loom,  and  when  he  perceived  that  it  was  what  he  was 
expected  to  perform  on,  he  was  taken  aback.  It  was  not  that 
he  had  not  seen  coach-horns  in  plenty,  but  he  had  seen  them  in 
their  proper  environment  and  at  their  proper  altitude,  their 
elemental  straightforwardness  making  an  exhilarating  right-angle 
with  the  guard's  mouth,  a  sort  of  streaming  pennon.  But  a 
coach-horn  in  its  bare  quiddity,  quite  as  tall  as  the  shrunken  old 
shepherd,  and  hardly  a  foot  shorter  than  Will  himself,  dissociated 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS         235 

from  jovial  visions  of  scarlet,  rum-soused  visages  and  spanking 
steeds,  was  as  ungainly  to  behold  and  as  awkward  to  handle  as 
it  was  difficult  to  explain  away.  Evidently  the  jade  had  bought 
him  the  largest  size  on  the  market ;  he  knew  not  whether  to  be 
flattered  or  vexed  at  her  idea  of  the  appropriately  virile.  But 
to  send  it  by  this  alien  hand — to  make  a  village  wonder  and 
scandal  of  it !  How,  indeed,  was  he  to  explain  to  the  bucolic 
mind  his  sudden  passion  for  the  instrument  ?  Flutes  and  con- 
certinas folks  could  understand,  even  tin  whistles  ;  but  what 
could  a  man  looking  round  for  a  farm  want  with  a  colossal 
coach-horn  ?  He  was  glad  at  least  he  had  met  Master  Peartree 
out  of  sight  of  his  parents.  There  was  a  note  attached  to  the 
case,  and  he  opened  it  the  more  eagerly  that  it  delayed  the 
explanation  which  Master  Peartree  seemed  to  his  morbid  vision 
to  be  grimly  awaiting. 

"  Sir, — Mr.  Daniel  Quarles  has  pleasure  in  forwarding  per 
favour  of  bearer  Mr.  William  Flynt's  esteemed  order.  Bill 
enclosed.  I  hope  you  will  find  the  stature  agreeable  to  you — 
it  was  only  by  casualty  I  got  such  a  protracted  one,  and  as 
the  compass  protracts  with  the  stature  you  could  easily  educe 
three  octaves  from  it.  Half-tones  of  course  I  shall  not  expect 
as  without  holes  only  a  musical  Arabian  spirit  like  my  grand- 
daughter can  evoke  them,  but  when  you  can  play  the  '  Buy  a 
Broom  '  Polka  with  concinnity,  I  shall  consider  the  gloves 
fairly  conquered. 

"  I  remain 

~"  Yours  obediently, 

"Daniel  Quarles. 

"  P.S. — The  mouthpiece  unscrews  being  mutable,  so  I  can 
exchange  it  for  another,  if  this  does  not  suit  Mr.  William 
Flynt's  lips." 

How  the  deuce  was  he  to  play  a  polka  he  had  never  heard, 
especially  "  with  concinnity  "  (w^hatever  that  might  be),  was  the 
dominant  thought  in  his  perturbed  brain.  But  as  Master 
Peartree  seemed  still  expectant — was  it  even  of  a  tune  ? — ^Will 
stooped  down  to  pat  the  dog,  whose  black-tipped  tail  was  hoisted 
like  a  friendly  signal.  It  was  a  ragged  animal  just  between  two 
coats — a  canine  counterpart  of  its  shabby,  straggly-haired  master 
—but  Will  caressed  it  like  a  velvety  lapdog  while  he  inquired 


236  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

carelessly — his  horn  tucked  like  a  telescope  under  his  arm — how 
the  Carrier  had  carried  herself,  what  exactly  she  had  said.  But 
he  only  provoked — after  the  briefest  glimpse  of  the  girl — a 
rambling  narrative  about  a  sheep  that  had  broken  its  arm  in  a 
"  roosh,"  in  the  panicky  restlessness  of  the  thundery  Sunday  :  it 
had  fallen  down  a  steep  and  another  had  rolled  on  top  of  it. 
And  even  with  this  "  meldoo  "  the  sheep  were  so  pernickety  you 
could  do  naught  with  'em.  Doubtless  in  this  cloudy  heat  they 
felt  the  w^eight  of  their  wool — he  should  be  shearing  some  for 
the  early  market  as  soon  as  they  could  get  the  labour,  which  was 
not  easy  in  these  migrating  days.  Even  young  men  who  came 
back  lazed  about,  he  added  pointedly,  when  they  might  be 
earning  good  money.  Will  hastened  to  inquire  whether  the, 
shearers  were  as  merry  at  their  work  as  he  remembered  them. 
He  could  never  forget  the  beautiful  bass  voice  of  Master  Peartree, 
but  he  supposed  time  had  now^  abated  its  resonancy,  or  was  he 
mistaken  ?  He  was  mistaken,  he  admiringly  admitted,  for  the 
ancient  was  soon  quavering  out  in  a  piping  voice  : 

"  There  was  a  sheep  went  out  to  reap^"* 

and  Will,  beating  time  with  the  great  horn,  was  solemnly  singing 
the  chorus  : 

"  Chrissimus  Day^  Chrissimus  DayT 

And  now  would  the  famous  singer  oblige  wdth  the  "  Buy  a  Broom 
Polka  "  ?  Alas,  he  did  not  know  it,  with  or  without  "  con- 
cinnity  "  !  But  young  Ravens  might  know  it,  he  who  was  as 
full  of  tunes  as  a  dog  of  fleas,  and  with  his  perpetual  flow  of 
melody  made  bread  and  tea  like  harvest  suppers,  and  shearing 
days  as  jolly  as  Chrissimus.  But  where  was  this  musical  box  ? 
Alas  !  he  had  "  gone  furrin,"  being  somewhere  beyond  Southend. 
But  master  expected  himi  back  for  the  shearing ;  he  was  a 
rolling  stone,  was  Ravens,  but  he  usually  rolled  back  this  time 
o'  year.  No,  not  rolled  with  liquor,  nor  yet  like  the  sheep  that 
broke  its  arm.  Had  it  been  a  fat  sheep,  he  would  have  butchered 
it,  but  as  it  was  only  store  he  had  set  the  arm  himself.  No,  he  had 
no  need  of  a  vet.  for  that,  like  the  degenerate  young  shepherds 
nowadays ;  he  wouldn't  be  beholden  to  cattle-doctors,  not  he, 
keeping  for  ever  o'  salts  and  gentians  and  bottles  of  lotion  in  his 
hut,  although  "  suspicioning  shab  " — it  might  even  be  rot  from 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS         237 

the  river-marsh — in  one  of  the  sheep  which  he  had  just  been 
examining  for  fly,  he  had  taken  the  opportunity  to  ask  Jinny  to 
send  round  Elijah  Skindle.  'Tis  a  long  talk  that  has  no  turning, 
and  Will,  when  the  narrative  thus  came,  by  a  wide  detour,  back 
to  Jinny,  ceased  fidgeting  with  the  horn,  and  demanded  what 
she  had  said  to  that.  It  transpired  that  she  had  refused  to  order 
Elijah,  despite  that  Mrs.  Flynt  had  recommended  him  as  cheaper, 
alleging,  drat  her,  that  Jorrow  was  the  better  man.  Will, 
curiously  forgetting  Mr.  Flippance  and  his  horse,  concurred  in 
the  view  that  carriers  cannot  be  choosers.  He  also  started 
another  current  of  indignation  against  carriers  getting  other 
folks  to  fetch  and  carry  for  them.  Would  the  hard-working 
shepherd,  who  was  too  easily  put  upon,  kindly  not  encourage  the 
girl  in  future  to  shirk  her  job  ? 

Touched  by  the  sense  of  his  own  magnanimity  and  the  sixpence 
slipped  into  his  palm,  the  good  shepherd  promised  to  repress  his 
obligingness  in  the  interests  of  the  higher  ethics,  and  Will, 
bidding  him  farewell,  slipped  behind  the  row  of  stag-headed 
poplars  opposite  the  gate  of  Frog  Farm,  and  strove — before  entering 
the  house — to  adjust  his  horn  down  his  trousers  and  up  his  back. 
It  was  no  easy  process  with  such  a  "  protracted  "  object  :  for- 
tunately it  was  thin,  save  at  the  swelling  end,  but  by  keeping 
this  bulge  below,  he  could  avoid  humping  his  back.  To  walk 
with  such  a  ramrod  up  it  and  adown  one  leg  would,  however, 
have  taxed  the  talents  of  the  most  graceful  damsel  training  for 
deportment.  He  hobbled  painfully  to  the  rear  of  the  farmhouse, 
designing  to  hide  the  horn  before  entering,  but  lo  !  there  was 
his  mother  filling  the  food -pot  of  his  neglected  ferrets. 

"  Oh,  my  poor  Will  !  "  she  exclaimed.  "  I  told  your  father 
you'd  have  rheumatics — sitting  in  chapel  in  your  damp  clothes." 
She  tried  to  take  him  pitifully  in  her  arms  but  he  limped  away, 
fearing  she  would  imagine  his  backbone  had  come  gtutside. 

"  It's  only  one  leg  a  bit  stiff,"  he  said  ungraciously.  But  she 
hooked  her  arm  in  his  and  drew  her  halt  offspring  towards  the 
back  door  ;  a  brief  but  parlous  journey,  for  he  felt  the  horn 
slipping  towards  his  boot. 

"  Why,  your  ankle's  swollen,"  said  Martha  tragically. 

"  It'll  soon  go  down,"  he  assured  her. 

A  terrible  struggle  agitated  the  maternal  heart.  Even  Will, 
'preoccupied  with  his  grotesque  position,  could  see  her  face 
working. 


238  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  You're  sure  you  wouldn't  like  to  have  the  doctor  ?  " 

"  Oh  no,  mother.     What  nonsense  !  " 

Her  clouds  lifted  a  little.  "  But  this  may  be  Jinny's  evening 
for  coming — I  could  tell  her  to  go  for  him  to-morrow." 

"  To-morrow  it'll  be  better— I  feel  certain,  mother." 

She  beamed.  "  I'm  so  glad  you've  found  faith,  dearie.  I 
knew  when  once  you  began  studying  the  texts  you  couldn't  miss 
it.  King  Asa,  too,  suffered  from  his  feet.  But  he  sought  to  the 
physicians  and  displeased  the  Lord.  Have  no  confidence  in  man, 
dearie.  There's  days  I  get  pains  in  my  side  as  if  my  ribs  grated 
together.  But  I'd  be  afraid  to  put  myself  out  of  the  Lord's 
hands,  after  I've  trusted  to  Him  all  these  years." 

Will  winced.  He  seemed  to  himself  vaguely  blasphemous.  As 
soon  as  he  was  alone  in  his  bedroom,  the  swelling  was  transferred 
to  the  capacious  box  so  miraculously  carried  from  Chipstone. 
He  dared  not  descend  to  supper  :  so  speedy  a  miracle  might 
have  seemed  too  "  Peculiar."  But  next  morning  (after  a  family 
breakfast  which  was  for  his  elders  a  veritable  feast  of  faith)  he 
stole  out  with  the  horn  and  his  fishing-rod  and  creel  to  the  river, 
which  in  the  watches  of  the  night  he  had  decided  upon  as  the 
loneliest  spot  for  practising,  while  the  open  ramshackle  boat- 
house,  where  the  rusty  punt  usually  nested,  was  to  afford  a 
hiding-place  for  the  instrument. 

It  was  worth  while  going  down  that  pastoral  slope  these  days, 
even  were  one  not  bent  on  music,  solitude,  and  the  winning  of 
gloves.  In  weather  so  prematurely  sultry,  the  river  was  so 
sweet  and  still  and  green,  with  its  shadowy  reflections,  its  blobs 
of  duckweed,  the  sedges  and  flags  along  its  banks,  and  the 
willows— grey- white  or  silvery — along  its  borders  :  gliding  so 
tranquilly  in  its  reaches  and  lapping  so  lazily  round  its  islands 
that  only  at  bends  did  the  water  seem  to  flow  at  all.  In  the 
undulating  meadows  that  sloped  to  it,  silted  with  cow-droppings, 
Master  Peartree's  kine  lay  around  chewing,  and  the  sense  of 
brooding  heat  gave  to  the  landscape  a  dreamy  magic,  suffused 
with  a  sense  of  water. 

It  was  to  this  idyllic  retreat  that  our  Tityrus  or  Corydon 
repaired  to  essay  his  metallic  pipe.  And,  standing  on  the  bank 
like  a  watchman,  his  horn  to  his  lips,  "  Tucker,  tucker,"  he 
breathed  industriously  into  the  unresponsive  instrument.  In 
vain  did  he  lip  and  tongue  the  notes  as  instructed,  nothing  broke 
the  sultry  silence.     Surely  the  mouthpiece  could  not  suit  Mr. 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS         239 

William  Flynt's  lips.  Suddenly,  in  his  shamed  impotence,  he 
had  a  sense  of  a  breathing  presence.  In  his  agitation  the  horn 
slipped  from  his  nervous  fingers  and  went  souse  into  the  water, 
while  the  startled  beast — for  the  observer  proved  to  be  only  one 
of  Master  Peartree's  cows — lumbered  bouncingly  back  along  the 
pasture. 

Fortunately  the  instrument  had  lodged  in  the  shallow  mud  of 
the  bank.  Fishing  it  up — it  was  his  sole  catch  that  week — he 
found  to  his  joy  that  it  emitted  a  faint  toot,  and  he  rightly 
divined  that  a  little  water  was  just  what  it  had  needed.  En- 
couraged by  this  intervention  of  Providence  in  his  favour,  his 
performance  bore  henceforwards  some  proportion  to  his  pains. 

It  was  embarrassing  though  to  return  from  these  painful  puffings 
without  a  single  bite.  Every  dinner-time  he  had  to  sneak  in  as 
best  he  could  with  empty  basket  after  a  morning  of  pertinacious 
tooting,  successful  enough  to  frighten  off  the  deafest  fish.  Once, 
indeed,  going  home  by  a  somewhat  roundabout  route  that 
skirted  Blackwater  Hall,  he  chanced  on  a  Chipstone  fishmonger 
serving  Long  Bradmarsh,  and  was  able  to  take  home  some  fruits 
of  his  rod.  But  the  only  time  our  piscatorial  swain  ever  tried 
for  an  honest  bite  was  when  he  saw  or  heard  somebody  or  some- 
thing coming  along.  Then,  drawing  in  his  horn  like  a  snail,  he 
presented  the  picture  of  the  complete  angler.  Usually  it  was 
only  Bidlake's  barge  that  disturbed  his  strenuous  solitude,  and  the 
transient  mockery  of  the  twins  was  for  the  futile  fisher,  not  for 
the  unsuspected  musician.  Not  even  Master  Peartree's  cows 
ever  munched  their  way  again  to  the  bank  while  the  horn  was 
at  its  fell  exercises,  for,  like  the  horn  which  the  fairy  Logistilla 
presented  to  Astolpho  in  "Orlando  Furioso,"  its  blast  seemed 
to  put  all  creation  to  flight.  His  sole  auditors  were  a  pair  of 
swans  who  refused  to  quit  their  normal  haunt,  though  they 
hissed  him  fiercely.  Possibly  they  were  accustomed  "  to  hear 
old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn,"  and  so  had  a  standard  of 
musical  taste.  Is  not  the  swan's  own  song,  too,  celebrated, 
though  it  appears  only  to  perform  before  it  dies,  as  if  to  evade 
criticism  ? 

But  however  soundly  the  swans  might  hiss.  Will,  after  three 
days  of  red-faced  rehearsal  on  the  pleasant  bank  of  the  Brad,  felt 
ready  to  challenge  his  female  critic  in  all  save  the  polka  she  had 
set  for  examination,  and  this  he  determined — after  failing  to  hunt 
it  out — was  no  fair  part  of  the  wager.     A  whole  evening  he  had 


240  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

spent  reknitting  the  thread  of  old  acquaintanceship  with  caroUing 
cottagers,  gleaning  much  gratitude  for  his  kindly  attentions,  but 
not  the  melody  he  was  after,  and  being  forced  politely  to  abide 
while  gaffers  piped  "  Heave  away,  my  Johnny,"  or  gammers 
ruthlessly  completed  "  Midsummer  Fair  "  or  "  Dashing  away 
with  the  Smoothing  Iron."  However,  he  could  now  turn  out 
such  complicated  military  flourishes  that  he  excited  his  own 
military  ardour,  and  felt  like  marching  in  his  thousands,  and 
doing  such  deeds  of  derring-do  that  the  lips  of  all  the  damsels  of 
Essex  would  vie  to  change  places  with  that  mouthpiece.  It  was 
high  time  then  that  this  particular  damsel  should  understand 
how  vain  was  her  hope  that  he  could  be  baffled  by  a  tube. 
Though  he  might  not  know  that  polka,  he  was  sure  that  whatever 
"  concinnity  "  might  be,  he  could  perform  with  it,  and  impatience 
began  to  steal  over  him  at  the  delay  in  the  test  performance. 
For  if  Jinny  had  fobbed  him  off  with  the  shepherd  on  Tuesday, 
she  evaded  service  altogether  on  Friday.  Even  Nip  might 
conceivably  crop  up  with  some  small  groceries  tied  on  to 
him,  and  he  could  not  try  it  on  the  dog.  Also,  unless  he  saw 
her  soon,  the  cattle  fair  would  be  upon  them,  and  she  still  unsaved. 
He  must,  with  the  relics  of  his  copybook  paper,  compose  a  new 
note,  formally  citing  her  to  stand  and  hear,  and  deliver  the 
gloves. 

But  it  was  not  easy  to  fix  the  place  for  deciding  the  wager. 
The  riverside  meadows  she  could  not  well  get  at  in  her  cart,  and 
for  her  to  come  specially  on  foot  was  hardly  to  be  expected,  in 
view  of  her  household  labours.  To  cut  her  off  and  perform  to 
her  on  a  high  road  was  to  run  risks  of  being  publicly  ridiculous  : 
even  by-ways  have  ears.  Suppose  his  nerve  or  his  breath  failed, 
suppose  some  impish  accident  muffled  up  the  horn  :  there  would 
he  be  with  swollen  cheeks,  a  mountain  in  labour,  producing  not 
even  a  mouse-squeak  ;  the  mock  of  man  and  beast.  But  there 
was  Steeples  Wood — not  too  far  back  off  the  high  road,  but 
approached  by  a  tangly  brake  that  few  ever  penetrated  :  there — 
if  he  could  persuade  her  to  it — was  the  ideal  place  for  the  great 
horn  solo.  In  a  postscript  he  would  express  his  willingness  to 
take  off  her  hands  the  purchase  of  the  Showman's  horse.  To 
convey  all  this  by  correspondence  involved  almost  as  much  effort 
as  the  practising,  though  his  renewed  call  upon  the  Bible  came 
to  Caleb  and  Martha  as  the  natural  sequel  of  his  faith-cure.  It 
was  no  small  feat  of  composition,  this  particular  letter,  in  face 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        241 

of  a  people,  which,  however  abundant  its  horses,  appeared  to 
have  had  neither  *'  wagers  "  upon  them,  nor  "  gloves,"  riding  or 
other. 

II 

That  gloves  were  unknown  to  the  ancient  Hebrews,  Will  could 
hardly  bring  himself  to  believe,  even  by  hours  of  searching, 
especially  after  coming  upon  a  Fashion  Catalogue  for  liadies, 
which  showed  a  surprising  wardrobe.  Bonnets  they  had,  it 
would  appear,  and  headbands  and  tablets  and  changeable  suits 
of  apparel,  and  mantles  and  wimples  and  crisping  pins  and 
fine  linen  and  hoods  and  vails,  and  mui^ers  and  girdles  and 
stomachers :  as  for  their  jewel-cases,  they  seemed  stuffed  not 
only  with  rings  and  ear-rings  and  charms  and  bracelets  and 
moony  tires,  but  likewise  with  jewels  that  dangled  at  the  nose  or 
tinkled  at  the  feet.  How  then  should  so  elegant  a  world  have 
dispensed  with  gloves  ?  But  so — after  scouring  the  sacred  Book 
from  Genesis  to  Revelation—he  must  finally  fain  believe.  Not 
a  single  patriarch,  priest,  satrap,  shepherd,  physician,  apostle, 
publican,  or  sinner  had  ever  sported  gloves,  and  the  Queen  of 
Sheba  fared  no  better  in  this  respect  than  the  Witch  of  Endor. 
Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  with  even  one  of  these. 
The  Pharisees,  it  would  appear,  covered  their  foreheads  with 
phylacteries — whatever  these  might  be — but  left  their  hands 
bare.  And  yet.  Will  thought  wistfully,  reading  so  early  in  the 
sacred  Book  how  Rebekah  "  put  the  skins  of  the  kids  of  the 
goats  upon  Jacob's  hands,"  they  might  surely  in  all  those 
centuries  have  gone  on  to  the  idea  of  gloves,  especially  for  winter 
wear.  But  no,  thousands  of  years  after  Rebekah,  the  knuckles 
of  Dives  were  apparently  as  raw  as  those  of  Lazarus.  Oh,  why 
had  he  not  betted  something  Biblical — a  muffler  now  would  have 
suited  either  sex  :  even  handkerchiefs  were  available.  Not  that 
he  could  not  risk  spelling  "  gloves "  to  accord  with  "  loves," 
which  he  found  with  no  great  difficulty  in  the  holy  text :  he  felt 
it  romantic  to  throw  himself  thus  trustfully  upon  "  love,"  even 
should  it  prove  misleading. 

Yet  the  search  was  not  altogether  vain,  for  though  he  could 
find  no  gloves,  the  prophets,  he  found,  were  full  of  exhortations 
to  Jinny,  which,  he  carefully  dog-eared  and  committed  to  memory 
and  kept  up  his  sleeve  for  contingencies.  "  How  canst  thou 
contend  with  horses  ?  "   Jeremiah  asked  her.     Ezekiel  warned 

Q 


242  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

her  against  the  cattle-dealer.  *'  By  reason  of  the  abundance  of 
his  horses  their  dust  shall  cover  thee."  As  for  Isaiah,  he  remarked 
plumply  :  "  Woe  unto  them  that  draw  iniquity  with  cords  of 
vanity,  and  sin  as  it  were  with  a  cart  rope." 

To  himself,  on  the  other  hand,  the  prophets  were  kind ; 
abounding  in  promises  for  the  prosperity  of  his  horn.  And  it 
was  Amos  who  supplied  his  letter  with  its  opening  sentence, 
abrupt  but  dramatic  : 

'^  Can  two  walk  together  except  they  be  agreed  ?  " 

But  the  letter  written,  there  was  the  problem  of  sending  it. 
The  intervention  of  either  Bundock  or  Daniel  was  intolerable. 
He  must  find  an  individual  way.  One  verse  that  he  came  upon 
— ^it  was  in  the  Book  of  Esther — enchanted  him  with  its  images, 
telling  how  Mordecai  wrote  an  order  in  the  King's  name  "  and 
sealed  it  with  the  King's  ring  and  sent  letters  by  post  on  horse- 
back, riders  on  mules,  camels,  and  young  dromedaries."  How 
he  would  have  liked  to  seal  his  letter  too  with  a  royal  ring,  and 
send  it  "  by  post  on  horseback."  He  had  a  vision  of  the  long 
procession  of  mules,  camels,  and  dromedaries  filing  along  the 
grass-grown  lane  to  Blackwater  Hall.  How  old  Daniel  would 
rub  his  eyes  at  the  strange  hum.ped  beasts — yes,  and  Jinny  too. 
She  would  perhaps  think  that  Mr.  Flippance  had  acquired  a  new 
show  and  was  paying  her  a  processional  visit.  Possibly  these 
animal  images  did  lead  him  to  the  invention  of  his  postal  method, 
or  possibly  it  was  his  prior  apprehension  of  Jinny's  utilizing  Nip 
as  a  package-bearer.  At  any  rate,  after  having  wondered 
whether  Martha's  pigeons  could  be  trained  up  in  the  way  they 
should  go,  he  hit  on  the  device  of  tying  his  note  to  Nip's  collar. 
The  creature  was  friendly,  and  that  Saturday  afternoon  it  would 
be  at  home.  He  would  only  have  to  hover  long  enough  around 
Blackwater  Hall  for  his  post-dog  to  fawn  upon  him.  Of  course 
there  was  no  certainty  the  dangling  missive  would  escape  Daniel's 
spectacles,  but  Nip  being  providentially  of  the  colour  of  paper, 
it  was  possible  heaven  had  not  blanched  him  in  vain.  Besides, 
this  timie  the  note  was  carefully  addressed  to  Miss  Jinny  Quarles, 
with  the  "  Quarles  "  scratched  out  by  an  afterthought  when  he 
remembered  that  it  was  not  her  name. 

But,  alas  !  Nip  did  not  play  up  ;  that  longed-for  quadruped  did 
not  appear  in  the  purlieus  of  the  Hall.  Will,  tired  of  carrying 
about  the  note,  thought  again  of  sticking  it  up  in  the  stable  and 
ventured  near,  but  his  fear  of  encountering  Daniel  Quarles  was  too 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        243 

lively,  and  finally  he  essayed — with  some  obscure  remembrance  of 
Bowery  melodrama — to  fix  it  gleamingly  in  the  fork  of  a  tree 
by  which  Methusalem  stood  when  harnessing  and  unharnessing. 
To  his  amaze  a  chaffinch  flew  out  of  the  fork  in  violent  protest, 
while  her  gaily  coloured  consort  dashed  up  from  another  quarter, 
crying  "  U-whit  "  at  him  like  an  avine  Flippance.  Peeping  into 
the  hollow  of  the  fork  he  saw  a  couple  of  rather  belated  youngsters, 
ugly,  bald-headed,  and  featherless,  apparently  new-hatched  and 
almost  savouring  of  the  egg  :  yet  when  he  touched  them  with 
the  note,  opening  great  eyes  and  yawning  with  yellow  beaks  and 
kicking  each  other  with  skeleton  legs.  But  before  he  could 
bethink  himself  of  a  new  posting-place,  lo  !  as  sudden  as  the 
chaffinches  but  far  more  welcome,  with  a  yelp  of  joy  and  a 
perpendicular  tail  wagging  like  a  mad  pendulum,  Nip  was  upon 
him  ;  and  having  succeeded  with  a  desperate  bound  in  licking 
the  tip  of  his  stooping  chin,  rolled  himself  on  mother-earth  with 
voluptuous  grunts.  Will  profited  by  this  supineness  to  attach 
the  note  by  the  thread  he  had  passed  through  it. 

The  new  postal  system  was  a  success.  For  when  Will  after 
high  tea  sneaked  out  to  the  Common  and  sounded  his  horn — with 
a  happy  combination  of  challenge,  salute,  and  signal — Nip  actually 
appeared  with  a  reply. 

It  was,  however,  unsatisfactory.  Miss  Boldero — the  very 
name,  though  he  divined  it  denoted  the  same  Jinny,  came  like 
a  glacial  blast — presented  her  compliments  to  Mr.  William  Flynt, 
but  she  had  no  time  to  be  romantic  in  woods  (she  said)  nor,  even 
at  their  homes,  could  she  ever  pay  more  than  volant  visits  to 
anybody,  and  that  strictly  in  the  way  of  Daniel  Quarles's  business. 
He  could  almost  always  find  her  at  Blackwater  Hall  except 
Tuesdays  and  Fridays,  but  she  trusted  he  would  not  be  too 
turgid  and  thrasonical  about  his  playing,  even  if  his  contumacious 
serenade  should  be  puissant  enough  to  extort  the  pair  of  gloves. 

All  these  strange  words  came,  of  course,  from  "  The  Universal 
Spelling-Book."  Will,  though  he  would  still  have  refused  to  toot 
before  her  grandfather,  might  have  *  felt  less  crushed  had  he 
know^n  that  in  that  ancient  authority,  "  romantic  "  was  defined 
as  "  idle." 

HI 

It  is  possible  that  persons  of  strict  ethics — like  Miss  Gentry, 
say — would  have  lost  sympathy  with  Jinny  in  these  epistolary 


244  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

efforts  of  hers  to  stand  on  tiptoe,  so  to  speak,  and  write  beyond 
her  education.  But  in  thus  titivating  her  style  with  gems  of 
speech  she  knew  not  to  be  false,  she  was  moved  by  the  necessity 
of  countering  an  overweening,  overbearing,  interfering  young 
man,  who  was  subtly  assuming  a  sort  of  critical  wardenship  over 
her  and  her  life  :  he  needed  a  good  vibration  ("  shaking  or 
beating  "),  she  must  teach  him  by  her  gelidity  ("  coldness  ")  to 
be  less  conversant  (^'familiar "),  and  that  she  was  quite  his 
parallel  ("  equaV),  He  must  be  made  to  feel  that  her  company 
was  not  to  be  had  for  the  rogation  ("  asking  "),  in  short  that  she 
was  no  housekeeping  ignoramus  to  be  ridden  over  by  world- 
travelled  wisdom,  however  genuine.  No,  she  was  not  going  to 
incurvate  ("  bow  or  bend  ")  to  Mr.  William  Flynt. 

This  rigidity  was  the  more  necessary  as,  ever  since  in  that 
thunderstorm  his  hand  had  tightened  on  hers — or  was  it  the 
reverse  ? — the  lightnings  seemed  to  pass  through  her,  the  rever- 
berations to  shake  her,  whenever  she  thought  of  him,  and  even 
when  she  did  not.  What  there  was  in  him  to  rend  her  thus 
elementally  she  could  not  understand  ;  doubtless  it  was  the 
memory  of  the  storm  now  for  ever  associated  with  him.  He 
seemed — ^it  was  perhaps  his  life  of  adventure — to  be  in  mystic 
unison  with  tempests  and  floods  and  that  sea-creek  of  her  child- 
hood, now  remembered  exclusively  as  tossing  and  white-flecked. 
Even  when  she  was  turning  over  her  Spelling-Book  to  find  words 
to  "  vibrate  "  him  with,  it  was  the  pages  that  vibrated  :  when 
she  copied  its  gelid  trisyllables,  she  felt  her  hand  again  in  his, 
and  her  quill  quivered  as  if  the  lightning  were  going  through  it. 

And  even  Miss  Gentry,  though  she  would  have  derided  Jinny's 
new  vocabulary,  might  have  admitted  that  there  was  a  laudable 
side  to  her  pursuit  of  learning  :  the  Spelling-Book  itself  over- 
flowed with  commendation  of  such  scholastic  zeal.  Jinny  no 
longer  knitted  or  sewed  in  her  evening  hour  of  leisure.  It  was 
occupied — even  after  the  concoction  of  the  grandiose  letter — in 
a  feverish  study  of  the  volume  neglected  since  her  first  scholastic 
period.  She  must  make  herself  a  greater  intellectual  power,  she 
felt  :  she  must  master  all  human  knowledge.  And  that  all 
human  knowledge  lay  in  the  hundred  and  fifty  pages  of  this 
little  book,  our  simple  village  girl,  who  was  not  romantic  in  any 
sense  of  that  word,  who,  except  for  Bible  and  hymn-book,  had 
never  read  a  book — not  even  a  novel — and  who  approached  life 
with  senses  fresh  and  virginal,  sincerely  and  crudely  believed. 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        245 

Nor  was  the  pose  of  "  The  Universal  Spelling-Book  "  calculated 
to  dissipate  her  delusion.  This  wonderful  work,  which  was  now 
destined  to  become  Jinny's  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend,  had 
nothing  in  common  with  those  shallow  productions  of  a  later 
period,  concerned  mainly  with  correct  combinations  of  letters. 
Dating  from  the  age  of  folios  and  exhibiting,  despite  its  diminu- 
tive size,  the  same  solid  solemnity,  it  did  really  take  all  know- 
ledge for  its  province.  (You  learnt,  for  example,  how  to  make 
the  very  ink  you  spelled  with — and  although  you  may  rarely 
have  possessed  those  best  blue  galls  of  Aleppo  which  formed  the 
base  of  black,  still  you  might  hope  to  get  the  three  pints  of 
stale  beer  that  were  the  substratum  of  red.)  And  not  only  all 
knowledge,  but  all  morals  formed  the  farrago  of  this  book.  Well 
might  it  ostentate  among  its  "  Patronizers  "  clergymen,  private 
gentlemen,  philomaths,  writing  masters,  and  heads  of  academies. 

Originally  published — as  already  related — in  the  year  of  the 
Lisbon  Earthquake,  and  creating  apparently  as  great  a  sensation 
(in  England  at  least),  it  constituted  an  omnium  gatherum  so 
peculiar  and  extensive  that  there  was  no  earthly  (or  heavenly) 
subject  you  could  be  certain  of  not  meeting  there,  though  there 
was  one  subject  you  could  be  certain  of  never  escaping,  for  it 
cropped  up  in  the  quaintest  connexions — and  that  was  Virtue. 

As  the  author — who  hailed  oddly  from  the  Royal  Exchange 
Assurance  Office — justly  claimed  in  his  dedication  to  the  Right 
Honourable  Slingsby  Bethell,  Esq.,  Lord  Mayor  of  the  City  of 
London,  and  .One  of  its  Representatives  in  Parliament  (an 
encourager  of  everything  tending  to  "  the  Practice  of  Piety " 
and  "  the  Good  of  Mankind  "),  it  w^as  designed  to  do  more  than 
barely  teach  the  young  idea  how  to  spell.  "  To  inculcate  into 
the  Minds  of  Youth  early  Notices  of  Religion  and  Virtue,  and  to 
point  out  to  them  their  several  Duties  in  thq  various  Stages  of 
Life  "  was  no  less  its  aim.  "  And  I  should  be  very  thankful," 
explained  His  Lordship's  obliged,  obedient,  and  most  humble 
servant,  "  should  I  prove  an  instrument  in  the  Hand  of  Providence 
in  preventing  but  one  of  the  rising  Generation  from  falling  a 
sacrifice  to  the  pernicious  Doctrines,  secret  Whispers,  and 
perpetual  Insinuations  of  Popish  Emissaries." 

It  was  a  passage  that  had  always  swelled  Jinny's  bosom  with 
emotion  and  the  vow  to  ensure  the  gratification  of  this  saintly 
aspiration  by  supplying  in  herself  the  minimum,  one  member  of 
the   rising   Generation   to   baffle   these   minions   of   the   Scarlet 


246  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Woman.  It  had  been  at  first  a  little  bemusing  to  reflect  that  for 
her  Peculiar  friends,  the  Established  Church  was  little  less 
pernicious  :  still,  fended  by  the  double  buffer  of  her  sect  and 
Protestantism,  she  had  thus  far  resisted  the  Emissaries  she  had 
never  encountered  (for  certainly  the  Rev.  Mr.  Fallow,  whatever 
the  Chipstone  curate  might  say  of  his  Puseyite  practices,  had 
never  tried  to  pervert  her  even  to  the  Establishment). 

With  three  generations  brought  up  on  this  pious  pabulum — 
the  copy  from  which  Sidrach  the  Owler  had  educated  himself  for 
smuggling  was  already  beyond  the  fiftieth  edition — -it  seemed 
strange  that  the  century  should  have  had  any  declensions  from 
virtue  to  note ;  that  papistry  should  have  progressed  was 
incredible.  ♦ 

If  in  her  dim,  childish  way.  Jinny  had  ever  felt  a  jarring  note 
in  this  treasure-house  of  virtue  and  information,  it  was  the 
assumption  that  both  these  existed  primarily  for  little  boys. 
True,  among  the  fascinating  woodcuts  was  one  depicting  little 
girls  at  school,  but  even  there  the  mistress  occupied  the  stiff 
chair,  while  the  Dominie  of  the  boys'  school,  majestic  in  a  full- 
bottomed  wig,  sat  throned  on  a  chair  with  arms.  "  A  good  child 
will  love  God,"  she  read  with  humid  eyes,  only  to  be  pulled  up 
short  by  "  he  will  put  his  whole  trust  in  Him."  Everything 
seemed  to  be  masculine,  from  God  downwards  :  there  was  no 
place  for  women  even  in  punishment :  to  be  "  well  whipt  at 
School  and  at  Home,  Day  and  Night  " — a  recommendation  she 
found  it  difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  definition  of  "  Ferula,"  as 
"  a  foolish  Instrument^  used  in  some  Schools  " — was*  a  Nemesis 
held  out  only  to  the  boy  who  minded  not  his  Church,  his  School, 
and  his  Book.  Such  a  one  would  live  and  die  a  Slave,  a  Fool, 
and  a  Dunce.  But  as  to  the  fate  of  bad  little  girls  there  was  a 
mysterious  silence.  Even  for  their  goodness  there  was  no  sure 
reward  :  for  though  presumably  they  were  included  in  the  well- 
behaved  who  would  be  clothed  in  Garments  of  Gold  and  have  a 
Crown  of  Gold  set  on  their  Head,  while  Angels  rejoiced  to  see 
them,  these  joys  were  never  definitely  attached  to  an  exclusively 
feminine  pronoun.  A  virtuous  "  woman  "  appeared  once  to  her 
relief,  but  it  was  only  to  be  a  crown  to  her  husband.  Even  in 
the  foot-notes  Jinny  could  not  find  a  female.  "  If  the  young 
learner  has  learnt  to  read  these  lessons  pretty  perfectly,"  said 
one  note,  "  let  him  go  over  them  once  more."  As  for  the  Useful 
Fables,  it  was  the  boy  that  stole  Apples  or  went  into  the  Water 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        247 

instead  of  going  to  School ;  and  when  it  came  to  the  longest 
story  of  all,  "  Life  truly  painted  in  the  Natural  History  of  Tommy 
and  Harry  " — the  story  that  professed  to  show  "  Youth  the  ways 
of  life  in  General,"  and  did  indeed  show  how  wickedness  wrecks 
you  on  the  Coast  of  Barbary,  where  you  are  torn  to  pieces  by 
wild  beasts  as  per  woodcut,  while  the  pattern  of  Virtue  and 
Goodness  still  lives  happy — it  appeared  that  even  a  realistic 
picture  of  life  may  be  complete  without  girls. 


IV 

Behold,  however.  Jinny — despite  her  sex — embarked  on  a 
learned  career,  and  burning  the  midnight  oil  in  her  fat  little  lamp 
instead  of  curling  up  in  her  chest  of  drawers.  Puckering  her 
brow  she  sat  on  a  squat  wooden  arm-chair  in  that  dun  papered 
living-room,  imbibing  virtue  and  information,  till  the  Dutch 
clock  in  the  outer  box-room  startled  her  with  its  emphatic 
declaration  of  the  hour,  and  the  cracked  mirror  revealed  eyes 
heavy-lidded.  Far  out  over  the  Common  streamed  the  curtained 
light  of  that  midnight  oil,  for  the  shutter  could  not  be  closed, 
owing  to  a  pair  of  blackbirds  that  had  set  up  house  in  the  eaves. 
Jinny  had  found  one  of  the  young  fallen  on  the  gra^s  :  she  had 
fed  it  with  morsels  of  meat  which  it  sw^allowed  with  great  yellow 
gulps,  following  up  the  meal  with  a  fluted  grace.  She  had 
restored  it  to  its  nest — touched  to  mark  the  domestic  virtue  of 
its  co-incubating  parents.  It  had  grown  quite  big  now  and 
flown  hoppingly  away  with  skort  sharp  cries,  but  Jinny  still 
cherished  the  nest  and  felt  no  need  of  the  barring  shutter.  In 
the  silence  the  creakings  of  the  cottage  often  sounded  like  foot- 
steps outside,  but  Jinny  was  not  nervous,  and  a  real  footstep 
would  rouse  Nip,  she  knew.  Sometimes,  these  warm  May 
nights,  she  heard  the  cuckoo  keeping  hours  as  late  as  hers,  some- 
times the  nightingales  would  sing  passionately  in  the  lane. 
There  was  one,  she  knew,  that  niched  in  a  mutilated,  ivy-swathed 
trunk  bordering  on  the  Common,  and  she  would  hear  it  answering 
the  faint  melancholy  calls  from  afar  with  throbs  and  gushes  of 
melody  as  well  as  with  a  series  of  quick,  piercing  notes.  And 
sometimes  when  the  air  was  clear  she  could  hear  the  distant 
church  clocks.  But  all  these  sounds,  like  Nip's  and  the  Gaffer's 
snoring,  were  but  a  restful  accompaniment  to  the  acquisition  of 
omniscience  :   even  the  nightingale,  in  her  ignorance  of  literature, 


248  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

failed  to  romanticize  her  thoughts,  painfully  bent  on  mastering 
all  there  was  to  know. 

Meanings,  we  have  seen,  played  a  great  part  in  these  studies  : 
"  Dollar — a  Dutch  coin  "  ;  "  Engineer — an  Artist  "  ;  "  Gam- 
badoes— a  Sort  of  Boots  "  ;  "  History — an  Account  of  things  "  ; 
"  Interview — Mutual  Sight  "  ;  "  Logarithms — Artificial  Num- 
bers "  ;  "  Mahomet — the  Turkish  Impostor  "  ;  "  Replevin — a 
Writ  so  called  "  ;  "  Stolidity — Foolishness  "  ;  "  Tarantula — a 
Baneful  Insect  "  ;  "  Valentine — a  Romish  Festival  "  ;  "  Uphol- 
sterer— an  Undertaker  '^  ;  "  Zodiac — a  Circle  in  the  Heavens  "  : 
such  were  the  strange  vocables  she  kept  muttering  and  mis- 
understanding :  believing  indeed  that  "  Paramour  "  was  merely 
a  grander  word  for  "  Lover^"*  and  connecting  divorce  with 
"  Schismatic — one  guilty  of  unlawful  separation^  It  pained  her 
to  meet  the  "  Sadducees — a  People  that  Denies  the  Being  of 
Angels,^'  slurring,  as  did  these  unimaginable  heretics,  the  status 
of  her  own  mother.  Surely  it  was  for  such  that  "  Damnation — 
the  punishment  of  Hell  Torments  "  had  been  designed.  Punctua- 
tion too  she  studied,  growing  learned  in  Apostrophes,  Asterisks, 
Carets,  Crotchets,  and  Obelisks  ;  other  hours  were  devoted  to 
Grammar,  Tenses,  Degrees  of  Comparison  (always  between  good 
and  better  Boys),  Genitives,  and  even  Scraps  of  Latin.  Pronun- 
ciation, however,  was  her  great  stumbling-block.  How  was  it 
possible  to  keep  one's  feet  in  the  chaos,  say,  of  four-syllabled 
words,  each  accented  on  a  different  syllable  ?  Antiquary, 
AmbaSe-ador,  Affidavit,  Animadvert — it  was  heart-breaking  and 
head-splitting.  Her  memory,  so  marvellous  when  vivified  by 
realities,  broke  down  before  this  procession  of  shadows. 

With  what  relief  she  turned  to  the  rich  riot  of  "  Moral  and 
Satyric  Poems  " — though  her  sex  was  still  distressingly  ignored, 
and  through  every  loophole  the  eternal  male  popped  up. 

He  most  improves  who  studies  zvith  Delight 

And  learns  Sound  Morals  while  he  learns  to  write, 

Stil],  v/here  "  Swearing,  Gaming,  and  Pride  "  were  rebuked  in 
lashing  lines,  she  was  not  sorry  to  find  the  petticoat  conspicuous 
by  its  absence.  It  was  a  rare  joy  to  come  on  Queen  Anne  in  a 
"  List  of  Abbreviations  "  under  the  unexpected  guise  of  A.R.  ; 
in  the  list  of  kings,  too,  she  appeared  again,  together  with  Mary 
and  Elizabeth ;  not  a  large  proportion.  Jinny  thought,  rejoicing 
at  the  Victoria  unforeseen  by  the  learned  author,  whose  "  Chrono- 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS  *     249 

logical  Account  of  Remarkable  Things  "  stopped,  like  her  friend 
Commander  Dap's,  at  the  Battle  of  Trafalgar. 

This  table  was  indeed  one  of  her  favourite  pages — it  gave  her, 
she  felt,  a  bird's-eye  view  of  all  history — and  with  her  head  for 
figures  she  never  forgot  that  the  Ten  Commandments  and  the 
Ten  Plagues  were  given  in  1494  B.C.,  and  that  the  sun  stood  still 
at  Joshua's  word  in  1454,  while  Daniel  was  in  the  Den  of  Lions 
in  536.  She  was  puzzled,  though,  at  the  destruction  of  Troy 
which  intervened  between  Joshua's  interference  with  the  sun  and 
Saul's  anointment.  Of  the  twenty-two  great  events  that  pre- 
ceded the  Christian  era,  this  was  the  only  one  that  the  Bible 
forbore  to  mention.  Subsequently  to  Christianity  things  seemed 
to  her  to  have  moved  fast,  for  up  till  the  year  1600  alone,  four- 
teen "  remarkable  Things  "  occurred — two-thirds  as  many  as 
had  happened  in  the  whole  previous  4007  years  since  the  world 
was  created — while  after  1600,  extraordinary  events  sprouted 
like  blackberries,  no  less  than  fifty  crowding  to  their  grand 
climacteric  in  Trafalgar. 

In  these  fifty  she  was  glad  to  see  included  the  Confutation  of 
Popery  by  Martin  Luther — a  personage  with  whom  Miss  Gentry 
had  made  her  familiar — and  she  thrilled  almost  with  local  pride 
to  find  "  Arts  and  Sciences  first  taught  at  Cambridge,  1119,"  for 
the  Cambridge  carriers  sometimes  penetrated  eastwards  as  far  as 
Chipstone  itself.  As  a  carrier,  indeed,  she  was  immensely 
excited  by  the  "  Eleven  Days  successive  Snow "  of  1674,  ^^^ 
"  Frost  for  thirteen  Weeks  "  of  1684,  "  The  Terrible  high  Wind 
of  November  26,  1703,"  "  the  great  and  total  Eclipse  of  the 
Sun,  April  22,  171 3,"  and  the  "severe  Frost  for  nine  Weeks" 
beginning  on  Christmas  Eve,  1739.  She  could  vividly  sympathize 
with  the  unfortunate  carriers  of  those  days,  and  she  did  not 
wonder  that  these  brumal  phenomena  should  form  so  great  a 
proportion  of  the  few  score  happenings  of  Universal  History,  for 
frosts  and  winds  must  be  terrible  indeed  to  be  recounted  as  on  a 
level  with  the  shooting  of  Admiral  Byng,  the  American  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  the  Birth  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the 
"  Attempted  Assassination  of  George  III  at  Drury  Lane  by 
Hadfield,  a  lunatic." 

These  studious  vigils  were  invariably  wound  up  with  a  prayer 
from  this  same  limitless  thesaurus  :  on  her  knees  by  the  trans- 
mogrified chest  of  drawers,  and  with  her  hair  hanging  down  her 
back,  and  the  lamplight  falling  on  the  coarse  grey-typed  page  of 


250  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  Spelling-Book,  Jinny  repeated  one  or  other  of  its  masculine 
supph'cations,  prose  or  verse,  and  only  a  cynic  ("  Cynic — a  Sour, 
Crabbed  Fellow ")  would  have  laughed  at  the  solemnity  with 
which  she  swallowed  all  those  motley  lucubrations,  whether  lay 
or  clerical.  An  impromptu  prayer  for  her  grandfather  was 
invariably  slipped  in,  for  this  holy  book  of  hers  finished  as 
terribly  as  the  Old  Testament,  and  what  made  it  worse  was  that 
this  awful  culmination  of  the  Spelling-Book  was  printed  in  black- 
letter.  It  was  a  gruesome  recital  of  the  miseries  and  follies  of 
''  the  Seven  Stages  of  Life  " — none  of  which  seemed  worth  living 
even  with  the  correctest  of  spelling,  while  death  seemed  worth 
dying  to  escape  the  depravity  and  decrepitude  of  the  final 
stadium.  But  although  her  grandfather,  with  all  his  peevish 
humours,  could  hardly  be  counted  so  steeped  in  sin  as  the  old 
man  of  the  text,  while  his  infirmities  were  still  rudimentary,  yet 
the  physical  prognostication  was  terrifying — **  for  toifjen  toe  come 
to  tf)O0e  peare,  t!?at  our  dBpejs  crolu  Hint,  dBare  neaf,  VimQ>z  pale,  {&anli0 
55f)afeinc,  irineeg  trembline,  anti  jTeet  faultering,  tijen  it  is  ebitient  t!?e 
Di0)3olution,of  our  mortal  tabernacle  iis  near  at  (&antJ/* 

Jinny  could  never  read  those  dreadful  words  but  she  would 
creep  anxiously  to  the  foot  of  the  dark,  twisting  staircase  and 
listen  for  the  reassuring  sound  of  the  Tabernacle  snoring.  And 
if  she  bore  so  patiently  with  his  whims  and  crotchets,  not  none  of 
the  credit  must  be  given  to  this  sanctimonious  Spelling-Book. 


While  Jinny  was  thus  pursuing  omniscience  and  equipping 
herself  to  meet  the  masterful  young  man,  and  while  the  young 
man  in  question  was  adding  the  mastery  of  the  horn  to  his 
conquests,  their  roads  failed  to  cross.  Jinny  went  to  chapel  the 
Sunday  following  the  thunderstorm,  but  Will  was  too  alarmed 
by  the  communal  expectation  of  public  autobiography  to  venture 
there  again,  and  his  parents  were  only  too  glad  to  ignore  his 
home-staying  and  to  resume  their  private  Christa-peculiar- 
delphian  service,  being  sufficiently  fortified  by  his  preoccupation 
with  the  Bible.  What  had  driven  Will  to  the  Book  again  was 
the  outrageous  appearance  on  Saturday  night  of  Uncle  Lilli- 
whyte  as  parcel-bearer.  Recovering  from  his  relief  that  the 
parcel  did  not  contain  snakes,  but  the  conventional  household 
stores,  Will  found  himself  angry  on  his  mother's  behalf.     What 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        251 

right  had  Jinny  to  foist  such  a  fusty  ragamuffin  upon  them,  the 
gay  strings  of  whose  rotting  beaver  only  accentuated  his  grimi- 
ness  ?  Jinny  must  know  that  his  mother  ranked  uncleanliness 
next  to  ungodHness.  And  Uncle  lilliwhyte  would  be  a  fixture 
too,  unless  violently  shaken  off — he  was  Jinny's  neighbour  ;  as 
natural  a  go-between  as  Will's  own  neighbour.  Master  Peartree. 
He  had  already  bribed  oif  the  shepherd  :  must  he  be  blackmailed 
by  both  ? 

And  so,  while  Essex  was  at  prayer.  Will  was  concocting  a 
furious  Oriental  epistle,  demanding  a  clean  envoy,  if  Jinny  was 
too  lazy  to  come  herself.  This  was  not  so  difficult  to  demand, 
though  laziness  seemed  as  unknown  to  the  Hebrews  as  gloves. 
He  had  dallied,  indeed,  with  his  original  idea  of  fetching  the 
household  parcels  from  Chipstone  himself,  but  somehow  he  could 
not  bring  himself  to  so  complete  a  severance  of  relations  with 
Jinny,  especially  as  after  the  appearance  of  Uncle  Lilliwhytc  in 
the  new  role  of  goods-deliverer,  his  mother  had  surprisingly 
suggested  that  to  spare  Methusalem's  legs,  the  old  nondescript 
might  always  in  future  bring  the  weekly  parcel  for  a  penny  or 
two.  Will  had  put  this  suggestion  emphatically  aside — it  would 
mean  exposing  his  mother  to  a  contact  she  detested — but  he 
wound  up  his  letter  to  Jinny  by  threatening  to  become  his  own 
carrier  unless  the  service  was  conducted  with  propriety.  Nip 
duly  returned  that  same  Sunday  afternoon  with  the  answ'er  that 
if  he  would  send  his  esteemed  order  in  writing,  Mr.  Daniel  Quarles 
would  have  pleasure  in  executing  his  commission  through  a 
scrupulously  scoured  ambassador.  Will  started  replying  in- 
stantly that  it  was  not  his  order  :  let  her  mark  that  he  was  not 
the  householder,  merely  the  "  scribe."  To  write  out  the  order, 
however,  gave  him^  unexpected  pause.  Who  could  have  realized 
that  "  parrafin,"  "  sope  "  and  "  shuggar  "  were  alike  unenjoyed 
by  the  heathen  Jews  ?  A  pity  that  Frog  Farm  was  itself  so 
"  flowing  with  milk  and  honey  "  :  with  what  confidence  he  could 
have  drawn  on  the  resources  of  Palestine  !  True,  one  might 
dodge — clamps  and  oil  were  abundant  enough  in  Judaea,  and 
purification  and  sweetness  could  be  suggested  with  airy  allusive- 
ness.  But  in  the  end  he  only  wrote  grandly,  "  Household  order 
the  same  as  uzual." 

Before  this  order  had  been  executed,  however,  chance  brought 
about  a  meeting.  Not  that  Miss  Gentry,  near  whose  wayside 
cottage  it  occurred,  would  have  called  it  chance.     For  that  deft 


252  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

needlewoman,  besides  believing  in  her  own  stained-glass  miracle, 
cherished,  as  we  know,  a  naive  faith  in  "  Culpeper's  Complete 
Herbal " — a  faith  doubtless  sustained  by  the  attacks  on  the  Pope 
or  on  infidel  physicians  that  might  lurk  snakelike  in  its  most 
innocent-seeming  herb.  Under  the  stimulus  of  this  elementally 
indelicate  work — never  permitted  to  stray  from  her  bedside, 
though  imparted  in  filtered  form  to  Jinny — she  would  tie  woody 
nightshade  round  her  neck  for  her  dizziness,  and  buy  watercress 
from  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  to  wash  away  pimples  with  the  juice. 
And  if  these  herbs  were,  as  Culpeper  testified,  under  the  respective 
governance  of  Mercury  and  the  Moon,  how  much  more  so  human 
life !  Miss  Gentry  had  indeed  remarked  to  Will  that  very 
afternoon  (when  he  at  last  brought  his  mother's  bonnet  to  be 
"  bleached  as  good  as  new  ")  that  her  own  horoscope,  cast  in 
infancy  by  her  aunt,  had  shown  that  the  first  time  she  went 
upon  a  voyage  she  would  be  drowned  :  a  reading  whose  infalli- 
bility her  happy  survival  demonstrated,  since  she  had  never  been 
foolish  enough  to  set  foot  upon  a  vessel.  "  But  for  the  decipher- 
ing of  this  horoscope,"  she  had  pointed  out,  "  I  should  surely 
now  have  been  drowned,  for  I  am  naturally  as  fond  of  voyages 
as  you." 

It  must  be  admitted  that  if  Miss  Gentry  had  thus  pathetically 
perished,  Will  would  not  have  taken  his  mother's  bonnet  to  her, 
nor  met  Jinny  that  afternoon.  But  then  would  he  have  met 
Jinny  but  for  the  foolish  sheep  ?  Even  the  ovine  fates,  it  would 
appear,  are  interblent  with  the  human. 

This  sheep  suddenly  dawned  upon  Jinny's  vision  as  Methusalem 
with  his  cunning  nose  w^as  trying  to  open  a  gate  that  led  over  a 
private  road,  on  either  side  of  which  its  fellows  grazed.  Pre- 
occupied with  the  task  of  clasping  Nip  so  that  he  should  not 
frighten  the  flock  in  his  passage,  she  did  not  at  first  observe  that 
in  the  gap  between  the  hinge  of  the  gate  and  the  post,  a  sheep's 
head  was  jammed,  and  that  Methusalem's  success  in  lifting  the 
latch  bade  fair  to  asphyxiate  it.  The  silly  creature,  having 
escaped  from  the  flock,  had  evidently  tried  to  jump  back  again 
through  this  gap,  at  a  point  just  large  enough  to  admit  its  head, 
and  with  the  failure  of  the  leap,  the  head  had  descended  into 
the  narrowest  portion  and  there  remained  in  pillory.  In  the 
creature's  terror  at  the  approach  of  the  cart  and  Nip's  excited 
barking,  its  efforts  to  free  itself  became  more  convulsive  than 
ever.     Checking  Methusalem  in  the  middle  of  his  pet.  trick,  and 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        253 

fastening  up  Nip,  Jinny  jumped  down  and  with  soothing  words 
seized  the  head  of  the  frantic  sheep,  which  was  still  thrusting  itself 
backward  and  forward,  though  without  the  sense  to  jump 
upwards  towards  the  broader  space.  But  alas,  its  spasmodic 
struggles  prevented  her  from  getting  a  sufficient  grip  on  it  to  lift 
the  wedged  and  weighty  head.  She  saw  its  ear  was  torn  and 
bleeding,  and  to  her  imagination  it  was  going  black  in  the  face. 
She  looked  round  desperately.  On  the  other  side  of  the  gate 
lay  the  flock,  scattered  apathetically  over  the  pasture  they  had 
reaped  and  manured,  chewing  a  tranquil  cud,  like  self-righteous 
citizens  before  the  writhings  of  one  of  their  own  black  sheep  :  of 
a  good  Samaritan  or  shepherd  there  was  no  sign.  She  climbed 
over  the  gate  and  strove  to  lift  the  agonizing  head  from  the 
other  side,  but  she  only  increased  the  sufferer's  frenzy  as  well 
as  Nip's. 

"  Be  quiet,  Nip  1  "  she  shouted,  almost  hysteric  herself.  And 
as  she  raised  her  eyes  to  admonish  the  yapping  terrier,  she  espied 
to  her  joy  a  puffing  pipe  and  a  stick  advancing  towards  her  cart ; 
whether  a  young  man  or  old  she  was  not  aware.  He  was  simply 
man  as  saviour,  and  he  was  at  the  gate  and  working  at  the  rear 
of  the  struggling  head  before  she  had  quite  realized  it  was  Will, 
and  a  certain  added  pleasure  at  the  sight  of  this  man  in  particular 
had  scarcely  time  to  well  up  before  it  was  swamped  by  the  far 
greater  pleasure  of  seeing  the  sheep  deftly  released.  It  staggered, 
however,  as  Will  let  it  go,  and  lay  sideways  on  the  road,  gasping, 
and  Jinny  observed  with  horror  a  raw  ring  round  its  throat 
where  the  w^ool  was  cut  through  as  by  a  cord.  But  before  she 
could  get  through  the  gate  to  its  assistance,  it  had  risen  feebly, 
and  as  she  came  towards  it,  it  trotted  off  timidly.  Vastly 
relieved,  she  tried  to  coax  or  chevy  the  truant  back  to  its 
companions.  But  it  refused  to  go :  on  the  contrary,  it 
retreated,  and  in  solitary  self-sufficiency  began  to  crop  the  way- 
side grass. 

"  Hasn't  spoiled  her  appetite  !  "  said  Will,  with  a  laugh. 

"  They  don't  seem  to  feel  things  as  much  as  us,"  agreed  Jinny. 

*'  No,  indeed."  He  knocked  the  ashes  out  of  his  pipe  and 
pocketed  it.  **  Fancy,  if  you'd  got  vour  head  nipped  like 
that  !  " 

There  seemed  something  aggressive  in  the  suggestion.  "  / 
should  have  known  to  lift  it  up  without  waiting  for  a  man," 
she  said. 


254  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  All  very  well,  but  when  one's  head's  caught,  one  is  apt  to 
lose  it :  one  struggles  blindly." 

"  We're  not  all  like  sheep  to  go  astray,"  she  said  uneasily. 
"  But  thank  you  for  your  kind  help."  She  jumped  up  and  drove 
slowly  through  the  gate.  He  closed  it  behind  her  and  ran  to 
open  the  gate  at  the  opposite  end  of  the  private  road. 

"  Thank  you  again,"  she  said,  passing  through. 

"  But  surely  you'll  come  into  the  wood  now  you're  so  near," 
he  cried  through  the  arch  of  the  vanishing  tilt. 

The  cart  unexpectedly  slackened.  Jinny's  head  was  turned 
backwards.     "  If  you  won't  be  long,"  she  said. 

He  shut  the  gate  briskly  and  kept  pace  with  her  slow  progress 
along  the  leafy  lane  towards  the  wood-path  they  both  knew. 
Nip,  untied,  sprang  to  fawn  at  his  feet,  and  then  bounded  into 
the  hedge  after  something  smelt,  and  barking  raucously,  wormed 
his  way  along  like  a  weasel. 

"  Why  didn't  you  come.  Will  ?  "  said  Jinny  softly. 

"  Wliv  didn't  you  ?  "  he  evaded.  ''  Why  did  you  send  Uncle 
Lilliwhyte  ?  " 

''  I  didn't  come  because  you  didn't,"  she  answered  simply. 

"  I — I — your  grandfather,"  he  stammered.  "  I  couldn't  well 
play  before  him." 

"  You  mean  you  couldn't  play  well,"  she  flashed. 

"  That's  all  you  know  about  it.  I  can  blow  better  than  Dick 
Burrage." 

"  Then  why  be  nervous  of  poor  old  Gran'fer  ?  He  might  have 
been  umpire." 

He  was  shocked  again.  "  Good  gracious.  Jinny  1  Where  did 
you  get  those  betting  words  from  ?  " 

"  That's  my  affair."  She  pursed  her  pretty  lips.  "  But  never 
mind — however  you  blow — you've  deserved  a  pair  of  gloves 
to-day  —in  sheepskin." 

He  smiled.     "  I'm  not  above  taking  two  pairs." 

"  If  vou  win  !  " 

"  Of.'course  I'U  win." 

"Don't  brag.  Save  your  breath  for  your  blowing.  We  shall 
soon  be  there." 

"  Oh,  but  I'm  not  going  to  blow  now,"  he  pointed  out. 

"  Not  now  ?     Then  why  have  you  lured  me  here  ?  " 

"  But  how  could  I  guess  I  should  meet  you  ?  How  could  I 
lure  you  ?     You  could  see  I  hadn't  got  my  horn." 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        255 

"  I  hadn't  noticed,"  Jinny  murmured. 

"  It's  big  enough,"  he  said  grimly. 

"  Then  I  certainly  shan't  ^o  into  the  wood.  I'm  much  too 
busy.  Good-bye,  Will."  She  flicked  her  whip,  but  ere  Methu- 
salem  could  quicken  a  leg,  a  terrible  yelping  came  from  the  bushy 
hedgerow — it  was  the  voice  of  Nip,  but  not  of  Nip  the  hunter, 
rather  of  a  hunted,  trapped  Nip. 

"  Oh,  poor  Nip  !  "  And  in  a  moment  Jinny  had  leapt  down 
and  was  peering  and  pushing  into  the  hedge.  But  she  could 
penetrate  scarcely  at  all :  the  wood  behind  was  firmly  guarded 
by  a  broad  chaotic  belt  of  thistle  and  nightshade,  burr  and 
bramble,  furze  and  stinging-nettle,  a  veritable  riot  of  prickliness  ; 
and  this  thorny  tangle  had  closed  upon  Nip — trespassers  prose- 
cuted indeed  ! — though  it  was  a  relief  to  his  mistress  to  find  the 
trap  was  natural,  not  wickedly  human.  Stuck  full  of  burrs,  and 
looking  like  a  spotted  pard,  her  pet  was  shrieking  for  first  aid. 
But  even  while  she  was  hesitating  to  pierce  farther,  despite  her 
gloved  hands,  Will  brushed  by  her,  thrilling  her  with  the  sense 
that  this  was  his  second  feat  of  animal  salvation  ;  while  the 
woodland  savours  and  the  rich  prodigality  and  ruin  of  nature — 
for  dead  wood  lay  around  as  profusely  as  rank  vegetation  sprouted 
— seemed  to  stir  in  her  the  same  sense  of  elemental  forces  as  the 
thunderstorm.  She  scarcely  noticed  that  Will  had  the  aid  of 
his  stick  in  parting  the  jungle,  and  when  he  restored  the  whining 
animal  to  her  arms,  gratitude  and  hero-worship  mingled  in  her 
emotion,  though  for  a  moment  she  was  too  occupied  in  picking 
Nip  clean  to  say  much,  while  Will,  for  his  part,  was  engaged 
with  equal  industry  in  removing  thorns  from  his  sleeves  and 
burrs  from  his  trousers. 

"  Oh,  you've  hurt  yourself  !  "  she  said  at  last,  catching  sight 
of  blood  and  scratches  on  his  hands  and  wrists. 

"  It's  nothing."  He  tried  to  pluck  out  something  from  a 
finger. 

"  Shall  I  help  you  ?  "  She  pulled  oif  her  driving-gloves,  took 
his  finger  and  squeezed  at  the  flesh,  perceiving  the  microscopic 
protrusion  of  the  thorn,  but  her  own  fingers  were  shaking  and 
she  could  not  extract  it.  He  said  it  did  not  matter,  it  would 
v^ork  out ;  then  he  started  sucking  it.  She  somehow  would  have 
liked  as  with  a  child  to  kiss  the  place  and  make  it  well — the 
whole  back  of  his  left  hand  seemed  reticulated  in  red — but 
instead  she  carried  Nip  back  to  his  basket  in  the  cart.     He,  too. 


256  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  scored  in  red,  though  he  did  not  seem  to  mind  any  more 
than  the  sheep.  As  she  bent  over  her  scratched  pet,  Will  came 
up  to  the  tail-board,  still  sucking  at  his  finger.  • 

"  I  shall  need  gloves  now,"  he  said,  glancing  with  comic 
ruefulness  at  his  scratches. 

"  You  poor  hero  !  "she  said,  with  eyes  softly  flashing.  "  I  will 
come  into  the  wood  and  you  shall  win  them." 

His  face  lit  up  ;   then  fell.     "  But  how  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Isn't  there  my  horn,  silly  ?  " 

He  laughed  gleefully.  "  You're  right  to  call  me  that."  She 
leaped  down,  the  horn  dangling  at  her  girdle,  and  fastened 
Methusalem  to  a  tree.  "  Not  that  he's  likely  to  move  :  still  his 
head  is  homewards."  Methusalem's  head,  however,  was  already 
grasswards  :  he  was  munching  with  gusto,  while  his  great  tail 
swished  at  the  flies. 

"  But  suppose  somebody  steals  the  parcels  !  "  said  Will  with 
sudden  compunction. 

"  This  isn't  Babylon — or  America,"  said  Jinny  witheringly. 
"  Besides,  there's  Nip." 

Only  a  few  yards  farther  was  the  opening  they  had  been 
making  for,  but  they  now  found  it  almost  as  overgrown  as  the 
entry  chosen  by  Nip,  and  had  it  not  been  for  the  rare  fern-leaf 
elders  in  the  hedge,  that  marked  their  memory  of  the  spot,  they 
might  have  passed  it  by.  ''  Might  be  in  Canada,"  said  Will. 
However,  he  pioneered  with  his  stick,  and,  following  him  closely, 
she  had  a  sense  of  safety  and  protection  unknown  since  the  days 
she  was  escorted  from  chapel.  It  was  quite  strange — yet  not 
unsweet — to  be  thus  guarded  from  the  venomous  vegetation 
thrusting  at  her  from  all  sides,  and  she  was  not  sure  she  was 
relieved  when  the  menace  and  novelty  were  over,  and  they  were 
in  the  wood.  The  struggle,  moreover,  had  made  the  humanized 
part  of  the  wood,  on  which  they  emerged,  somewhat  tame.  The 
grove  of  young  ash,  beautiful  as  the  slim  silver-grey  trunks  were 
with  their  new  green  livery — too  light  to  cast  a  shadow — sug- 
gested commerce  to  both  of  them,  and  the  suggestion  was 
emphasized  by  the  charred  remains  of  a  bonfire  of  elm-loppings, 
and  by  a  deserted  charcoal-burner's  hut  in  a  clearing.  But 
poetry  had  gathered  on  the  mossy  stumps  of  other  trees,  long 
since  felled,  and  they  came  down  a  wonderful  azure  river  of 
bluebells  running  as  between  wooded  green  banks.  As  they 
waded  through  the  tall  thin  stalks,  they  chanced  here  on  a  patch 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS         257 

of  late-lingering  primroses  and  there  on  green  advance  waves  of 
foxgloves,  with  their  long  leaves.  Primrose,  bluebell,  foxglove — 
what  a  beautiful  succession,  thought  Jinny.  How  marvellous 
was  earth  in  its  changing  loveliness,  and  Heaven  in  its  unchanging 
bounty !  On  another  slope,  crowned  by  Spanish  chestnuts, 
glittered  a  stream  purling  down  to  lose  itself  in  scrub.  Here 
rosemary  was  in  bloom,  humming  with  bees,  and  yonder  was 
broom,  its  yellow  blossoms  showing  against  a  lighter  green  than 
the  earlier  gorse,  which  flowered  in  great  golden  clumps. 

"  The  gorse  looks  fine,"  said  Jinny. 

"  And  smells  finer,"  said  Will.     "  Let's  sit  down." 

"  Not  here,"  said  Jinny,  coyly  shrinking.     "  There's  nettles." 

"  They're  dead  !  "  he  said,  grasping  their  yellow  brittleness. 
But  they  walked  on. 

They  came  over  baby  bracken  and  crisp  beechnuts  to  a  sort 
of  ring  surrounded  by  blushing  young  oaks,  and  little  silver 
birches  with  their  fiat  green  leaves,  and  tall  aspen-trees,  and  one 
lonely  mountain-ash  with  white  fi.owers.  Overhead,  early  as  it 
was,  the  moon  had  long  been  hanging  at  three-quarters,  white 
and  magically  diaphanous :  a  dream-planet.  Unseen  wood- 
uigeons  purred,  and  a  tomtit  was  singing. 

"  Here  !  "  said  Will,  beginning  to  sit  down. 

"  No,  no  !  "  She  clutched  his  arm  to  keep  him  up.  "  An 
ant-heap  !  "     This  time  her  shyness  had  found  sounder  cover. 

He  gave  a  comical  '^'  Oh  !  "  and  stood  watching  the  squirm  of 
seething  life,  absolutely  black  at  the  central  congestion,  where 
ants  walked  indifferently  under  or  over  one  another  :  they  were 
like  the  moving  grains  in  an  hour-glass,  Jinny  thought.  W^ill 
poked  his  stick  into  the  great  piazza. 

"  Don't,"  said  Jinny. 

"  I'm  not  hurting  them."  The  ants  were,  in  fact,  already 
using  the  rod  as  a  causeway.     "  Why,  they're  like  you,  Jinnv  !  " 

"  Like  me  ?  " 

"  All  carriers  and  all  busy." 

She  laughed,  and  followed  their  movements  with  a  new 
sympathy,  though  she  was  rather  disgusted  by  those  that  carried 
dead  flies  or  dead  ants. 

"  Those  are  not  carriers — those  are  undertakers,"  she  insisted. 

They  sat  down  at  last  on  a  mound  of  spongy  moss,  free  from 
formic  activity,  and  there  was  a  silence.  The  littJe  purling 
stream  was  too  far  off  to  break  it,  but  they  heard  a  chaffinch 

R 


258^  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

and  the  peep-bo-playing  cuckoo,  with  that  golden  human  note 
that  floats  through  the  warm,  brooding  May.  And  then  the 
irrepressible  and  unbasketable  Nip  came  rushing  and  tearing, 
not  making  straight  for  them,  but  appearing  and  disappearing 
like  a  giant  fungus  in  the  rich  masses  of  blues  or  greens  or  yellows. 

He  made  an  opening  for  conversation,  and  presently  when  he 
came  snuggling  into  Jinny's  arms — poor  scotched  creature  ! — an 
opportunity  for  joint  patting  and  petting  :  a  process  in  which 
hands  do  not  always  succeed  in  partitioning  out  the  pattable 
and  pettable  surface  rigidly,  but  graze  and  brush  each  other,  and 
even  lie  passively  in  abstracted  contact. 

"  Why  shouldn't  I  buy  this  wood  ?  "  said  Will,  after  one  of 
these  sustained  manual  juxtapositions. 

"  Wouldn't  that  be  lovely  ?  "  said  Jinny. 

"  Yes — I  must  settle  something  soon.  Those  aspens,  though, 
I'd  cut  'em  down.  They're  only  a  weed.  And  yonder  ashlings 
weren't  planted  quite  close  enough — you've  got  to  make  'em 
fight  for  air  if  you  want  'em  straight  enough  to  sell." 

Jinny  was  vaguely  disappointed  at  the  turn  of  this  conversa- 
tion ;  not  following  the  romantic  dream  vaguely  underlying  it. 

"  But  could  you  afford  to  buy  such  a  big  wood  ?  "  she  mur- 
mured. 

"  Big  wood  ?  Why,  in  Canada  you  get  forever  of  land  for 
nothing  1  " 

"  Then  why  didn't  you  stay  there  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  This  is  better  than  America,"  and  his  hand  touched  Jinny's 
too  consciously. 

"  Why,  what  was  the  matter  with  America  ?  "  she  murmured, 
withdrawing  the  hand  from  Nip's  flank  with  a  little  blush. 

Everything  was  the  matter  with  America,  it  appeared.  He 
was,  indeed,  more  anxious  to  explain  how  nothing  was  the  matter 
with  Essex,  but  under  Jinny's  physical  bashfulness  and  intel- 
lectual curiosity  he  found  himself  headed  off  his  native  county 
and  kept  closely  to  Transatlantic  territory.  And  under  the  spell 
of  her  eager  attention  he  was  soon  discoursing  fluently  enough, 
sketching  a  discreetly  selected  picture  of  his  adventures,  beginning 
with  the  emigrant  sailing  packet  in  which  he  had  gone  out  as 
a  stowaway,  but  wherein  he  fared  little  worse  than  the  emigrants 
proper,  who  in  the  first  six  of  the  thirty-seven  days'  voyage  had 
had  none  of  the  stipulated  provisions  served  out  to  them,  despite 
their  contract  tickets,  and  no  meat  during  the  whole  voyage. 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        259 

They  had  had  to  be  satisfied  with  their  daily  water  and  the  right 
of  cooking,  and  complaints  were  met  with  oaths  from  the  officers 
and  doctors,  and  sometimes  even  with  fists  or  rope-ends  from 
the  sailors.  Once  or  twice  the  hose  had  been  turned  on  them, 
but  there  were  over  nine  hundred  of  them,  he  said,  so  she  might 
imagine  the  Babel  and  confusion,  though  there  were  two  great 
passenger  decks  on  which  the  tallest  man  could  stand,  and  on 
whose  shelved  sides  they  could  all  find  sleeping-space,  with  never 
more  than  six  to  a  berth.  And  then  from  the  moment  America 
had  burst  upon  the  vessel  in  the  guise  of  touts,  runners,  and 
employers,  all  anxious  to  mislead  or  enslave,  he  had  borne 
through  the  continent  the  banner  of  a  steady  disapprobation. 

In  the  States,  where  his  first  clutches  at  Fortune  had  been  made, 
peculiar  perils  awaited  the  British  immigrant.  If  he  gravitated, 
as  was  natural,  to  tlie  cliques  and  boarding-houses  of  his  country- 
men, he  was  likely  to  be  soon  "  used  up  "  by  the  gambling  and 
drinking  sets  that  feigned  to  make  him  welcome.  And  if  he 
escaped  this  pitfall  by  his  resourcefulness,  he  would  strike  the 
native  American  prejudice  against  English  immigrants,  popularly 
supposed  to  consist  of  the  paupers  and  wastrels  whom  the  parish 
overseers  of  Old  England,  anxious  to  be  quit  of  the  burden  of 
supporting  them,  bribed  with  free  Atlantic  passages  and  dumped 
on  the  struggling  New  World :  a  prejudice,  Will  admitted  laugh- 
ingly, which  his  own  purse  had  done  nothing  to  diminish. 

At  first  he  had  got  a  job  as  car-driver  and  fed  at  the  market- 
houses,  but  though  the  food  was  good  and  cheap,  the  company  was 
rough  of  manner  and  language.  And  even  when  he  was.  earning 
good  money — at  a  boot-store  with  the  sign  of  a  gigantic  boot 
made  of  real  leather  reaching  to  the  first-floor  windows — he  had 
disliked  the  "  go-along-steamboat  "  pressure  of  existence,  and 
the  Mechanics'  Boarding  House  where  gabbling  Yankees  gobbled 
at  a  pace  both  unhealthy  in  itself  and  unchivalrous  to  the 
unpunctual.  The  habit  of  loading  the  table  with  all  the  courses 
simultaneously  took  off  the  edge  of  his  appetite  if  he  was  early, 
and  left  only  universal  ruins  if  he  was  late.  He  had  no  patience 
with  clams  that  were  not  oysters,  egg-plants  that  were  not  eggs, 
and  corn  that  had  to  be  munched  cow-like.  Accustomed  to  the 
clean  linen  of  the  paternal  farm,  he  loathed  the  insect-ridden 
bedrooms  one  divided  with  a  varying  number  of  strangers.  He 
liked  to  see  pigs,  but  not  perambulating  and  scavenging  the 
streets ;    why,  in  New  York  they  were  more  numerous  than  the 


26o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

dogs  !  Providence  had  designed  tobacco,  he  opined,  for  smoking 
and  not  for  chewing  ;   and  saliva  for  swallowing,  not  for  spitting. 

It  was,  in  fact,  a  most  unpleasant  America  that  loomed  up  to 
Jinny's  vision  that  day,  especially  in  contrast  with  this  lovely 
w^ood,  overbrooded  by  the  white  moon  now  growing  faintly 
golden  :  a  sort  of  spittoon  of  a  continent,  mitigated  by  dollars 
and  dancing.  Even  in  Canada,  for  which  Will  had  felt  a  more 
personal  responsibility — accentuated  by  the  British  soldiers  to 
be  met  at  every  turn — and  in  which  he  gladly  picked  out  points 
of  superiority  to  the  States,  a  similar  sense  of  massive  untidiness 
had  weighed  upon  him  and  jarred  every  home-born  instinct. 

He  tried  to  convey  to  Jinny  the  desolation  of  zigzag  rail-fences 
that  took  the  place  of  these  hedges  now  glorious  with  hawthorn 
and  fool's-parsley  and  the  starry  stitch  wort ;  the  raw  settlements, 
the  half-built  log  huts  hardly  superior  to  yon  derelict  charcoal- 
burner's  hut  (their  windows  stuffed  sometimes  with  old  straw- 
hats),  the  unachieved  roads,  full  of  mud  or  dust,  the  ubiquitous 
stumps  that  were  once  trees,  the  piles  of  logs  that  were  not  yet 
habitations,  all  that  crude  civilization  arising  shoddily  out  of  the 
virgin  forest  on  the  sole  principle  of  the  cheapest  practicable, 
with  nothing  whole-hearted  but  the  lust  for  dollars.  Caleb 
Flynt's  slow  English  conservatism,  Caleb's  unworldly  standards, 
spoke  again  through  his  son.  But  even  Will  was  too  inarticulate 
to  put  his  feeling  precisely  into  w^ords — and  when  Jinny  reminded 
him  that  in  this  very  wood  trees  had  been  cut  down  and  burned, 
and  that  he  himself  had  spoken  of  cutting  down  the  aspens,  he 
could  not  quite  make  clear  to  her,  who  had  never  known  any 
but  long-humanized  places,  the  peculiar  indecency  of  a  forest  at 
the  stage  of  semi-transformation  into  a  mushroom  settlement. 

Beautiful  enough  the  backwoods,  he  laboured  to  explain,  where 
man's  fight  with  the  forest  was  only  begun,  where  great  beeches 
and  maples,  and  wild  flowers  still  possessed  the  black  mould  the 
settler  was  to  lay  bare  for  wheat ;  where  his  pioneer  hut  was 
circled  by  a  green  gloom,  and  the  chink  of  his  cow-bells  or  the 
laughter  of  his  children  alone  vied  with  the  ring  of  the  axe  and 
the  thunderous  fall  of  the  giants.  But  later  on — "  it's  like  that 
plover's  egg  you  opened  once,"  he  burst  forth  with  a  sudden 
inspiration.     "  No  longer  an  egg,  not  yet  a  bird  ;   only  a  smell  !  " 

"  But  it  was  you  who  gave  it  me,"  laughed  Jinny.  There  was 
a  great  content  at  her  heart,  sitting  here  and  seeing  her  little 
world  open  out  in  forests  and  seas  and  emotions  still  stranger. 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        261 

And  he — he  for  the  first  time  enjoyed  the  society  of  woman  as 
spiritual  counterpart,  had  moments  in  which  he  forgot  Jinny  was 
pretty,  in  which  her  hand — now  unconsciously  nestling  in  his  in 
her  absorption  in  his  narration — was  felt  as  a  friendly  rather 
than  as  a  physical  glow.  Unfortunately  in  this  sense  of  a 
sympathetic  Jinny  lay  the  serpentine  temptation  which  shattered 
their  paradise.  For,  beguiled  by  her  apparent  subjugation,  he 
went  on  to  improve  the  occasion.  "  And  it's  just  the  same  with 
women  who  are  neither  w^omen  nor  men.  A  woman's  place  is 
the  home." 

The  slipping  of  Jinny's  hand  out  of  his  was  the  first  sign  that 
he  had  roused  her  to  reality.  Her  cry,  "  How  late  it  is  I  "  was 
the  next.  And  she  looked  at  the  sunset  glowing  in  glamorous 
gold  through  the  trees.  There  was  a  magic  peace  in  the  air,  and 
a  rare  thrush  sang  as  in  a  dream.     It  seemed  a  tragedy  to  move. 

Will  protested  vehemently.  "  It's  not  late  at  all.  You  were 
unusually  early  this  afternoon.  No,  don't  go — you'll  wake  up 
poor  Nip." 

"  Did  your  story  send  him  to  sleep  ?  Rude  dog  !  But  I  must 
go — a  woman's  place  is  the  home  !  "  She  got  up,  smiling,  with 
the  snoring  dog  in  her  arms,  but  her  mockery  was  friendly 
enough  :  the  intimate  atmosphere  could  not  be  dissipated  at  a 
jerk.  He  was  constrained  to  follow  her,  if  only  to  precede  her 
through  that  jungly  path  :  the  prospect  of  driving  home  with 
her  still  shone  rosy. 

"  By  the  way,"  he  said  lightly,  "  I've  been  talking  with  Mr. 
Flippance  about  getting  that  horse  for  him." 

"  What  !  "     She  stopped  and  turned  on  him,  her  eyes  blazing. 

"  His  last  animal  was  faked,"  he  explained  mildly.  "  He  was 
badly  taken  in,  and  you  can't  know  all  the  tricks  of  the  trade  as 
well  as  a  man." 


And  isn't  Mr.  Flippance  a  man  ?  " 
"  Yes,  of  course.     But — but- 


It  all  depends  on  which  man,  you  see — and  which  woman." 
But  I'm  sure  no  woman  knows  properly  about  horses,"  he 
said.     "  How  would  you  tell  the  age,  for  instance  ?  " 
"  By  the  teeth,  of  course." 
"  Which  teeth  ?  " 

Jinny  flushed..  She  really  did  not  know,  and  that  made  her 
only  angrier  :  "  If  I  wanted  your  help  in  my  aifairs,  I  should 
have  asked  you." 


262  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Well,  there's  nothing  to  be  mad  about." 

"  There  is  everything  to  be  mad  about.  How  did  you  know 
he  wanted  me  to  get  a  horse  ?  Only  because  I  told  you.  And 
then  you  go  to  him  and  interfere  with  my  business  and  insinuate 
I'm  incapable." 

"  It's  not  so  much  you're  incapable "  he  began. 

"  It's  because  a  woman's  place  isn't  the  cattle-market,  I  know. 
But  why  can't  we  buy  cows  as  well  as  butter,  and  horses  as  well  as 
horse-collars  ?  " 

"  Because  only  men  go — and  it's  rough." 

"  Well  then,  let  women  go  and  it  won't  be." 

"  And  do  you  want  women  to  be  horsemen  too,  get  up  at  four 
o'clock  and  go  ploughing  ?  " 

"  Why  not  ?  " 

"  They  haven't  the  strength,  for  one  thing.  There's  lots  of 
things  they  can't  do,  and  never  will.  Take  thatching,  for 
instance — you  can't  imagine  a  woman  sprawling  along  a  roof." 

''  Yes,  I'can." 

"  Of  course  you  can,"  he  sneered.  "  You  can  imagine  her  in 
breeches." 

"  If  petticoats  get  in  the  way." 

"  There'll  never  be  Bloomerites  in  England,"  he  said  grimly. 
"  You  mark  my  word.  If  a  woman  can't  plough  or  dig  without 
leggings,  that's  a  proof  she  wasn't  meant  to  plough  or  dig." 

They  had  reached  now  the  pleached  and  tangly  path  back  to 
the  road,  but  she  darted  ahead  of  him,  battling  with  the  branches 
herself  in  her  revolt  from  dependence.  He  could  not  regain  the 
lead  unless  he  jostled  rudely,  and  every  now  and  then — not 
with  wilful  malice,  but  no  less  maddeningly — she  held  back  for 
him  the  boughs  she  had  parted.  And  all  the  while  the  sleeping 
Nip  was  protected  too  :    clasped  by  one  hand  to  her  bosom. 

Suddenly  the  circle  of  her  little  horn  got  caught  in  the  bushes 
like  the  horn  of  Isaac's  ram.  "  Why,  Jinny,"  he  cried,  "  we 
forgot  all  about  the  horn  !     Wait  1     Wait  !  " 

She  disentangled  it  calmly.  "  You  shan't  blow  mine.  You 
must  blow  your  own  now." 

He  fired  up.     "  You  want  to  get  out  of  the  gloves." 

"  Now  you're  going  horn-mad,"  she  jested  icily,  emerging  on 
the  high  road.     "  Good-bye,  Mr.  Flynt." 

It  was  the  first  time  she  had  withheld  the  Will. 

"  Good-bye,  Miss  Boldero,"  he  said  as  frigidly,  removing  his 


COMEDY  OF  CORYDON  AND  AMARYLLIS        263 

hat  with  an  exaggerated  gallantry.  Each  felt  that  the  parting 
was  final  :   never  would  they  even  speak  to  each  other  again. 

But  they  had  yet  to  reckon  with  Nip.  For  that  intelligent 
creature,  waking  into  the  distressing  atmosphere  that  had  been 
generated  while  his  vigilance  was  relaxed,  would  be  no  party  to 
the  breach.  When  he  perceived  that  the  cart  was  to  go  off 
without  Will,  he  jumped  down  and  tried  to  chevy  him  into  it, 
and  as  the  parties  went  off  at  a  tangent,  he  ran  desperately  from 
one  to  the  other,  striving  to  shepherd  them  together,  barking 
and  pleading  and  panting  like  a  toy  engine.  It  was  only  a  per- 
emptory blast  from  a  distant  horn  that  at  last  persuaded  the 
distracted  animal  where  his  first  duty  lay. 

The  dying  day  still  flooded  the  earth  with  warmth  and 
radiance  :  the  little  coffee-and-cream.-coloured  calves  still  frisked 
in  the  meadows  that  the  buttercups  turned  into  fields  of  the 
cloth  of  gold  :  the  forget-me-nots  were  still  gleaming  in  the 
cottage  gardens,  the  lilac  was  still  peeping  over  manorial  walls, 
the  laburnum  still  hanging  down  its  yellow  chandeliers,  and  the 
horse-chestnut  upholding  its  white  candelabras.  But  for  these 
twain,  obstinately  and  against  the  best  canine  advice  going  their 
separate  ways,  the  colour  had  been  sucked  out  of  the  landscape 
and  the  clemency  from  the  air.  Before  Will,  wandering  deviously, 
had  remembered  his  evening  sausages,  these  also  had  grown 
cold  ;  mist  and  clouds  had  turned  the  moon  to  a  blood-red 
boat,  and  the  bats  were  swooping  and  the  wood-owls  shrilling 
where  larks  had  soared  and  sung. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

CUPID  AND  CATTLE 

Wit  she  hath  zuithout  desire 
7o  make  known  how  much  she  hath  ; 
And  her  anger  flames  no  higher 
^kan  may  fitly  sweeten  wrath. 

Full  of  pity  as  may  he^ 

though  perhaps  riot  so  to  me. 

Browne,  "  Britannia's  Pastorals." 

I 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  the  sting  of  Mr.  Will  Flynt's  offence  lay- 
precisely  in  Jinny's  ignorance  of  horses,  and  that  if  her  old 
companion  had  come  to  her  aid  more  tactfully,  she  would  have 
welcomed  his  co-operation  in  the  great  purchase.  But  her  pride 
in  her  work  would  hardly  allow  her  to  admit  even  to  herself 
that  here  was  a  commission  perhaps  beyond  her  capacities.  Had 
she  not  enjoyed  an  almost  lifelong  experience  of  Methusalem  ? 
As  a  monogamist  would  resent  being  told  he  knew  nothing  of 
matrimony,  so  Jinny  repudiated  the  notion  that  she  knew 
nothing  of  equinity.  Besides,  the  cattle-market  was  far  from 
seeming  so  strange  a  world  to  her  as  Will  had  imagined.  Had 
her  cart  not  often  conveyed  thence  or  thither  a  netted  calf,  had 
she  not  marketed  even  his  own  mother's  piglings  ?  A  fig  for 
the  masculine  aura  !  If  Mr.  Flippance  exaggerated  after  his 
fashion  in  declaring  she  would  have  undertaken  to  get  him  the 
moon — at  any  rate  it  was  not  the  man  in  it  that  would  have 
kept  her  back. 

It  was,  therefore,  with  a  bruised  and  burning  but  indomitable 
heart  that  Jinny  went  about  her  work  these  ever  longer  days.  For 
women  must  work,  though  men  may  mope.  Poor  Will,  who  had 
nothing  to  do  but  to  chew  his  bitter  cud  of  memory,  was  the 
more  pitiable,   and  his  temper  was  not  improved  when  early 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  265 

Friday  evening  the  comparatively  clean  Master  Gale,  evidently 
caught  on  his  way  home  from  school,  arrived  with  "  the  same  as 
uzual."  This  apple-cheeked  and  white-collared  understudy  for 
Jinny  was  no  less  an  eyesore  than  Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  and  Will 
made  Martha  refuse  the  parcel  on  the  ground  that  if  they  en- 
couraged the  lad,  it  would  lead  to  truancy.  Such  was  his 
solicitude  for  the  schoolboy  whose  copy-book  he  had  diverted 
from  its  scholastic  function.  But  he  was  not  less  furious  when 
Farmer  Gale  brought  back  the  parcel  the  next  morning  on  horse- 
back and  explained  amiably  that  he  had  seen  Jinny  about  it, 
and  that  henceforward  this  overburdened  damsel  would  leave 
the  Flynt  parcel  with  his,  and  he  would  have  pleasure  in  delivering 
it  in  the  course  of  riding  about  his  farms. 

The  rain  and  the  cold  snap,  that  had  come  so  suddenly  after 
the  quarrel  in  the  wood,  was  welcome  to  Jinny  in  her  present 
mood.  For  her  the  summer  was  over.  True,  she  espied  its  first 
wild  rose,  but  it  reminded  her  only  of  a  round  strawberry  water- 
ice,  such  as  her  well-to-do  clients  spooned  at  the  Chipstone 
confectioner's.  Everything  was  gelid,  except  Nip's  nose,  and  that 
but  added  to  her  depression.  Was  the  darling  feverish  from  the 
scratches  of  his  spiny  crawlings,  or  did  he  share  his  mistress's 
heavy  humours  ?  Her  distraction  might  have  led  to  a  nasty 
accident  had  not  the  last  of  the  trio  kept  his  head,  for  in  a  lonely 
lane  Methusalem,  who  in  these  days  seemed  to  whinny  his 
sympathy  and  nuzzle  into  her  palm  with  enhanced  tenderness, 
deftly  avoided  the  prostrate  antlered  trunk  of  an  oak-tree  which 
had  been  split  and  splintered  by  lightning.  Possibly  it  had  lain 
there  since  that  Sunday's  storm,  for  her  work  had  not  brought 
her  that  way.  The  bark  of  the  whole  tree  had  been  peeled  off, 
save  for  a  small  patch  where  a  few  buds  still  suggested  vitality, 
and  Jinny  had  a  grandiose  sense  that  all  nature  sympathized 
with  the  strange  desolation  that  had  come  over  her  joyous  self. 

Her  mind  turned  to  fate  and  constellations  as  she  drew  up  at 
Miss  Gentry's  door  and  summoned  with  a  blast  that  fantastic 
female,  who  was  feeding  the  chickens  with  which  she  variegated 
life  and  tantalized  Squibs.  Miss  Gentry  did  not  need  anything 
beyond  her  usual  depilatory.  It  was  a  standing  grief  and 
astonishment  to  her  that  though  white  lilies  (under  the  domain 
of  the  moon)  will  "  trimly  deck  a  blank  place  with  hair,"  neither 
Culpeper  nor  the  planets  had  provided  against  the  contrary 
contingency  :    even  fig-wort  (owned  by  Venus)  merely  removing 


266  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

wens  and  freckles.  Hence  she  was  reduced  to  a  mere  chemist's 
prescription  :  a  solution  of  barium  sulphide  swayed  by  no 
known  planet.     The  stuff  came  in  a  pot. 

Miss  Gentry  in  ordering  it  did  not  shirk  the  word  "  depilatory." 
On  the  contrary  she  pronounced  the  five  syllables  with  a  pom- 
posity which  was  the  more  impressive  to  Jinny  because  even 
"The  Universal  Spelling-Book"  stopped  short  at  four  syllables. 
Not  for  worlds — whether  to  her  client  or  the  public  at  large — 
would  Jinny  have  betrayed  her  knowledge  that  the  hair-destroyer 
represented  a  never-ending  battle  with  Miss  Gentry's  moustache. 
And  for  the  sensitive  dressmaker  herself  the  polysyllable  was  a 
soothing  cover.  Ostrich-like  she  hid  her  head  in  its  spacious 
sandiness. 

There  was,  however,  the  little  matter  of  Martha's  bleached 
and  new-trimmed  bonnet,  which  Jinny  might  convey  to  Frog 
Farm,  and  the  casual  mention  that  it  was  Will  who  had  brought 
it  led  to  considerable  conversation.  Jinny's  equipage  was  drawn 
up  outside  the  little  garden,  where  tulips  (red,  damask,  and  pink) 
stood  like  tall  guards  before  a  tropical  palace  ;  and  Miss  Gentry, 
despite  the  chill  wind,  leaned  on  her  garden-gate,  carefully 
nursing  her  black  cat  against  Nip's  possible  swoops. 

The  excellent  lady,  whose  erudition  Jinny  had  always  absorbed 
with  the  reverence  due  to  a  reader  of  ^he  Englishi/joman' s 
Magazme^  was  always  delighted  to  have  the  girl  sitting  at  her 
feet — even  though  to  the  crude  physical  vision  Jinny  always 
appeared  to  be  sitting  above  her  head,  and  Miss  Gentry  to  be 
looking  up  to  her.  Sometimes  real  information  from  the  afore- 
said magazine,  which  bore  the  sub-title  of  "  The  Christian  Mother's 
Miscellany,"  was  thus  transmitted  to  Jinny ;  but  Miss  Gentry's 
brain  was  obviously  too  cluttered  up  with  archaic  notions  to  be 
really  beneficial  to  her  young  devotee.  Thus,  although  Miss 
Gentry  enlarged  Jinny's  mind,  it  was  more  a  matter  of  range 
than  of  accuracy. 

The  conversation  to-day,  however,  was  on  a  more  personal 
plane.  Jinny  was  resolved  to  speak  no  further  word  to  Mr. 
William  Flynt :  his  interference  was  unforgivable.  But  when  it 
transpired  that  he  had  brought  the  bonnet,  she  did  not  attempt 
to  check  Miss  Gentry's  flow  of  favourable  comment,  still  less  to 
contradict  it.  For  a  Peculiar  he  was  quite  the  gentleman.  Miss 
Gentry  opined,  especially  after  that  coarse  and  flippant  Bundock. 
Not  tall  enough  for  her  taste,  because  she  thought  you  ought 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  267 

always  to  look  up  to  a  man  ;  still,  handsome  in  a  rough  way, 
despite  his  ginger  hair. 

"  Not  ginger  !  "  Jinny  protested. 

,"  It  shades  to  ginger,"  the  dressmaker  replied  severely,  as  an 
authority  upon  colours.  "  But  it  served  to  brighten  up  his  face, 
which  was  none  too  cheerful.  Born  under  Saturn,  I  should 
think,  and  the  sign  of  the  Scorpion." 

"  And  what  effect  has  that  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  alarmed. 

"  Well,  for  one  thing  it  qualifies  the  unruly  actions  and  passions 
of  Venus." 

"  The  goddess  of  Beauty,"  observed  Jinny,  airing  her  Spelling- 
Book. 

"  Of  Love,"  corrected  Miss  Gentry. 

Jinny's  face  shaded  towards  the  colour  under  discussion,  and 
she  cried  :  "  Down,  Nip,"  to  that  recumbent  animal's  amusement. 
"  He  nearly  jumped  on  the  bonnet-box,"  she  explained. 

"  He  should  eat  herbs  under  the  dominion  of  the  Sun,"  said 
Miss  Gentry. 

"  Nip  ?  " 

"  No — Mr.  Flynt.     He  needs  vital  spirits."  -► 

"  Still,  ginger  is  hardly  the  word,"  murmured  Jinny. 

"  It  looks  ginger  against  his  clothes,"  persisted  Miss  Gentry. 
"  Of  course  a  man  can't  understand  dressing  himself." 

"  Why,  he's  better  dressed  than  anybody  in  Long  Bradmarsh 
— except  Mr.  Fallow,"  said  Jinny. 

Miss  Gentry  was  mollified  by  the  compliment  to  her  pastor. 
''  All  the  same  his  coat  wrinkles  at  the  shoulders,"  she  said. 
"  You  notice  next  time." 

"  I've  got  better  things  to  do  than  to  look  at  Mr.  Flynt's  coat- 
sleeves,"  said  Jinny.     "  And  I'll  be  going  on." 

"  Well,  if  you  do  see  him,  give  him  my  kind  regards,"  said  Miss 
Gentry,  "  and  say  that  any  time  he's  passing  and  would  like  a 
cup  of  tea,  I'd  be  glad  to  discuss  the  tract  I  gave  him." 

"  Oh,  it's  no  use  trying  to  convert  him,"  said  Jinny.  "  He's 
nothing  at  all." 

"  Then  why  did  he  go  to  your  chapel  the  other  Sunday  ?  " 

"  Did  he  go  ?  "  said  Jinny,  amazed.  "  I  dare  say  that's  what 
has  depressed  him." 

"  He  not  only  went,  but  with  your  peculiar  ideas  of  the  House 
of  God,  he  had  his  dinner  there  !  " 

"  Oh,  no  !     Why  he  was  dining  at  '  The  Black  Sheep.'  " 


268  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Nothing  of  the  sort.     A  dressmaker  has  ears." 

"  But  a  carrier  has  eyes.     And  I  saw  him  there." 

"  Then  I'll  never  believe  Isabella  Maw  hood  again." 

"  I  hope  you  haven't  been  making  her  more  vanities,"  said 
Jinny,  as  she  slowly  turned  Methusalem's  nose  the  other  way. 

"  Only  a  new  bonnet,  you  funny  little  Peculiar.  You  see  the 
case  was  coming  on  at  the  Chelmsford  Sessions,  and  I  should  have 
got  a  verdict  against  Mr.  Mawhood  not  only  for  his  wife's  silk 
dress,  but  for  the  chickens  his  ferrets  killed " 

"  You  issued  a  replevin,  I  suppose,"  put  in  Jinny  grandly. 

"  I  could  have  had  a  tort  or  a  subpoena  or  anything,"  assented 
Miss  Gentry,  with,  equal  magnificence.  ''  But  the  defendant 
thought  best  to  compromise.  He's  got  to  clear  this  cottage  of 
rats  for  nothing  this  winter — you  know  how  they  come  gnawing 
my  best  stuffs — and  in  return  my  landlady  has  to  pay  for  a  new 
bonnet  for  his  wife." 

"  But  Mrs.  Mawhood' s  silk  dress — who  pays  for  that  ?  "  asked 
Jinny  mystified. 

"  Oh,  Mrs.  Mott  pavs  for  that." 

"  But  why  Mrs.  Mott  ?  " 

"  She  didn't  want  to  have  a  scandal  in  the  community,  and 
your  so-called  Deacon  swore  he  hadn't  got  the  money.  They 
make  Mrs.  Mott  pay  for  everything  nowadays." 

"  It's  too  bad,"  said  Jinny.  "  And  Mrs.  Mawhood  comes  out 
of  it  all  with  her  dress  paid  for  and  a  new  bonnet." 

"  Well,  she  does  become  clothes  more  than  her  sister-Peculiars, 
I  must  say  that — present  company  excepted  !  That  old  rat- 
catcher's lucky  to  have  got  such  a  young  wife  for  his  second,  even 
though  he  was  her  third." 

"  She's  not  so  young,"  said  Jinny. 

"  She's  no  older  than  I  am,"  persisted  Miss  Gentry.  "  And 
born,  like  me,  under  Venus." 

Jinny  suppressed  a  smile.  Despite  her  respect  for  Miss  Gentry 
she  had  never  accepted  her  standing  invitation  to  explore  the 
Colchester  romance.  Unread  in  the  literature  of  love  though 
she  was,  the  girl's  natural  instinct  refused  to  see  the  middle-aged 
moustachio'd  dressmaker  as  the  heroine  of  a  love-drama.  Her 
affair  with  the  angel  seemed,  indeed,  to  place  her  apart.  "  I 
think  it's  disgraceful  to  have  had  three  husbands,"  she  insisted. 

"  Not  at  all,  when 'each  is  a  Christian  marriage,  and  the  first 
two  spouses  have  been  duly  taken  by  an  overruling  Providence. 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  269 

Of  course  the  unhallowed  romance  one  inspires  is  another  thing. 
As  I  always  say  to  Bundock — oh,  we  ought  not  to  have  men- 
tioned names,  ought  we,  Squibs  dear  ?  Please  forget  it."  She 
stroked  the  cat  in  her  arms.  "  But  there.  Jinny  !  You  can't 
understand  these  things — you  too  were  born  under  Saturn." 

"  How  do  you  know  that  ?  "     Jinny  was  vaguely  resentful. 

"  You're  so  cold-blooded — perhaps  it  was  "even  under  the  con- 
stellation of  the  Pisces — the  Fishes,  that  is.  You've  never  taken 
the  faintest  interest  in  Love.  Do  you  know,  I  made  a  rhyme 
about  you  the  other  day." 

"  A  rhyme  !  "     Jini^y  was  excited.     "  Do  tell  me  !  " 

Miss  Gentry  shook  her  head.     "  You  wouldn't  like  it." 

"  Oh,  but  i  must  hear  it." 

Miss  Gentry  continued  obstinately  to  stroke  Squibs.  But 
finally,  as  if  electrified  by  the  fur,  she  broke  out  like  an  inspired 
pythoness,  in  a  weird  chanting  voice  : 

''  When  the  Brad  in  opposite  ways  shall  course^ 
Lo  !  Jinwfs  husband  shall  come  on  a  horse^ 
And  'Jinny  shall  then  learn  Passion^ s  jorceP 

Jinny  was  so  overwhelmed  with  admiration  at  the  poetry — 
quite  on  a  par,  she  felt,  with  the  pieces  of  ''The  Universal 
SpellingnBook,"  especially  as  the  Rhyme  or  ^'jingle  in  the  ear  " 
was  on  the  very  pattern  of  the  model  verse  there  given  : 

Prostrate  my  contrite  Heart  I  bend, 
My  God,  my  Father  and  my  Friend, 
Do  not  forsake  me  in  the  end 

— that  she  could  hardly  take  in  the  sense  at  the  moment. 

"  How  lovely  !  "  ^he  said. 

"  I'm  glad  you're  satisfied.  It  means,  of  course " — Miss 
Gentry  firmly  explained  the  oracle — "  that  you'll  never  marry, 
being  as  incapable  of  Passion  as  the  Brad  of  flowing  backwards 
and  forwards  at  the  same  time." 

A  strange  protest  as  written  in  letters  of  fire  crept  through  all 
Jinny's  veins.  Even  her  face  flamed.  She  began  ''clucking" 
to  Methusalem  to  start. 

"  And  I've  made  one  about  Mrs.  Mawhood  too,"  pursued  the 
pythoness,  now  irrepressible.  "  I  don't  wish  her  ill,  but  I'm 
afraid  it'll  prove  true,  poor  thing."     And  without  waiting  to  be 


270  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

discouraged,    indeed,    following   the    already   moving   cart,    she 
chanted  : 

"  She  may  look  to  Souths  she  may  look  to  Norths 
But  the  finger  of  fate  hath  forbidden  a  fourth, 
And  the  rat-slayer,  clinging  to  life  and  his  gold. 
Shall  dance  on  the  grave  where  she  lieth  cold.^^ 


C6 


Not  dance  !  "  laughed  Jinny,  relieved  at  this  diversion. 
"  Well  preach — it's  just  as  bad,  when  a  man's  not  ordained," 
said  Miss  Gentry,   and  this  being  the  signal  for  a  theological 
assault,  Jinny  drove  off  rapidly. 


II 

But  she  had  no  intention  of  bearing  the  bonnet  to  Frog  Farm. 
Nor,  despite  the  account  that  Farmer  Gale  had  given  of  the  new 
parcel  arrangement,  had  she  really  agreed  to  establish  him  as 
sub-carrier-in-ordinary.  He  was  too  moneyed  and  important  for 
that,  and  she  found  it  hard  enough  to  accept  the  favour  of  being 
driven  to  and  from  chapel  in  his  dog-cart — a  favour  necessitated 
by  her  grandfather's  and  even  her  own  ideas  as  to  the  indecorum 
of  their  business  cart.  Besides,  she  had  almost  resolved  to  seek 
his  advice,  perhaps  his  help,  in  the  famous  horse-purchase  :  any- 
thing rather  than  break  down  before  Will  1  So  she  must  not 
overdo  it.  No,  Master  Peart ree,  for  all  his  novel  churlishness, 
must  convey  the  bonnet.  He  could  scarcely  be  treated  like 
Farmer  Gale's  boy,  and  if  they  did  refuse  it  at  his  hands,  still  it 
would  only  abide  next  door. 

The  shepherd-cowman  was  not,  however,  to  be  found  in  his 
accustomed  haunts,  and  she  lost  a  good  hour  in  hunting  for  him 
in  the  various  mutually  distant  pastures  to  which  he  led  his 
ever-edacious  sheep.  None  of  the  men  ploughing  the  great  red 
fields  for  turnips  had  seen  him  pass.  At  last,  by  the  aid  of  a 
taciturn  lout,  who  was  driving  a  tumbril  laden  with  hurdles  and 
backed  with  a  tall  crate.  Master  Peartree  was  located  in  the 
farm  buildings  at  the  other  extremity  of  Farmer  Gale's  estate  in 
a  barn-like  structure  facing  a  long  row  of  cart-sheds. 

Skirting  a  sunless  pond  that  was  scurvy  and  ill-smelling,  she 
drew  up  at  the  gate  and  blew  a  summons  on  her  horn,  but  its 
only  effect  was  to  startle  the  chickens  pecking  in  the  litter,  and 
the  piglings  fighting  to  snatch  their  mother's  garbage  from  her 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  271 

tub  or  to  nuzzle  at  her  teats.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
carry  the  bonnet-box  to  the  barn,  for  the  great  farmyard  was 
too  mucky  to  drag  her  cart  through.  Picking  her  way  among 
the  strawy  compost  heaps,  she  divined  why  her  horn  had  brought 
no  answer  :  it  had  been  deadened  by  a  melody  proceeding  in  a 
lusty  tenor  voice  from  the  tall  folding-doors,  and  this — somewhat 
to  her  surprise — was  none  other  than  the  air  of  "  Buy  a  Broom." 

It  forced  her  to  polka  to  it  the  rest  of  the  way,  and  although 
she  must  fain  trip  gingerly  mid  the  manure-heaps  and  the  melody 
had  ended  with  applause  before  she  reached  the  thatched 
structure,  still  it  was  with  a  brighter  feeling  that  she  found 
herself  at  the  open  doors.  But  the  first  glimpse  within  made 
her  turn  pale  and  draw  back  a  little.  The  scene  she  had  so 
unexpectedly  stumbled  upon  w^as  the  ^tranger  and  grimmer  for 
the  silence  that  had  now  fallen,  though  the  faces  of  the  shearers 
astride  the  struggling  sheep  were  still  lively  enough.  Master 
Peartree  had  his  boot  over  the  head  of  a  recalcitrant  lamb,  which 
but  for  her  recent  adventure  she  would  have  imagined  choking. 

But  it  was  not  the  ungentle  shepherd  that  made  for 
her  the  centre  of  the  picture,  for  among  these  men  in  dirty 
green  corduroys  and  roUed-up  check  shirt-sleeves,  whose  legs 
gripped  grunting,  w^heezing,  struggling  or  feebly  kicking  sheep, 
was  one  in  cleaner  clothes,  whose  bare,  brawny  arms  gave  her  a 
sharp  sensation,  almost  as  if  he  had  nipped  her  with  the  shears 
he  held  in  his  palm.  Was  it  boredom  or  the  need  for  his  labour 
that  had  enlisted  Mr.  William  Flynt  in  this  service  ?  She  did 
not  know,  but  pale  and  dumb  she  retreated  from  the  unconscious 
Will,  whose  sheep,  •  wedged  between  his  legs,  hung  limp  with 
meek,  helpless  eye,  the  very  image  of  a  sacrificial  victim,  and 
was  being  sheared  with  the  meticulous  concentration  of  the 
outsider  bent  on  showing  he  is  not  inferior  to  the  professional. 
And  indeed  Will's  was  the  sole  sheep,  she  saw  at  once  and  with 
admiration,  that  though  nearly  bare  of  its  wool  showed  without 
blood-fleck  :  a  consummation  to  which  its  prudent  lethargy  had 
doubtless  contributed.  Young  Ravens,  on  the  other  hand,  who 
was  now  lying  with  both  feet  on  his  animal,  had  nicked  it  on  ear, 
leg,  and  breast  :  apparently  one  could  not  serve  two  masters — 
song  and  scissors. 

Perceiving  Jinny  with  her  bonnet-box,  this  young  humorist 
now  sang  out  the  old  street-cry  :    "  Buy  a  band-box  !  " 

The  chaff  stayed  her  retreat  and  stiffened  her  trembling  form. 


272  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Hullo  !  "  she  retorted,  with  less  than  her  usual  wit.  ^'  Back 
again  like  a  bad  penny »" 

Even  as  she  spoke  she  saw  Will  and  his  sheep  give  a  spasmodic 
start,  and  the  first  speck  of  blood  appear  on  the  flawless  skin. 
But  the  shearer  did  not  look  up,  although  he  automatically 
stretched  out  his  hand  for  the  ointment. 

"  Do  ye  don't  struggle,"  observed  Master  Peartree  amiably  to 
his  youthful  ewe.     "  Oi'm  not  so  strong." 

As  nobody  said  anything  further,  and  Master  Peartree,  intent 
on  his  lamb,  did  not  look  up.  Jinny  too  stood  silent  for  a  moment 
with  her  incongruous  bonnet-box ;  recovering  her  sang-froid,  and 
watching  a  catcher  trying  to  drive  in  an  unshorn  lamb  from  the 
pen  in  which  it  had  cowered  and  which  it  now  ran  round,  bleating, 
terror-stricken  and  unseizable.  She  wondered  if  its  heart  were 
thumping  more  wildly  than  hers.  Not  that  there  was  terror  in  her 
own  breast — rather  a  strange  exultation  that  her  presence  had  had 
power  to  incarnadine  the  immaculate  sheepskin.  But  her  eyes 
roamed  shyly  from  Will  and  his  nipped  victim,  and  studied  with 
elaborate  attention  the  divers '  coloured  show-cards  of  the  suc- 
cessful ram  lambs  that  made  their  vaunt  upon  the  beams  or 
along  the  sloping  walls,  through  which  the  thatching  stuck 
pleasantly.  Her  mind  went  back  to  that  sunny,  bracing  day  in 
February,  to  the  immense  pastoral  landscape  of  straw-roofed 
sheep-pens,  ooze,  mangold  heaps,  and  haystacks,  on  which  she 
had  chanced  when  the  lambs  now  so  agitated  were  new-yeaned  : 
some  only  an  hour  or  two  old,  with  long  skeleton  legs  and  bodies 
smeared  as  with  yellow  gold.  How  friskily  they  had  soon  learnt 
to  leap  on 'their  mother's  back  !  That  day  she,  too,  had  been 
as  untroubled,  needing  no  outside  melody  to  brisk  up  her  pace. 

Young  Ravens,  inspired  by  his  new  audience  to  a  fresh  burst 
of  melody,  started  on  "  The  Mistletoe  Bough,"  the  old  ballad  she 
had  heard  sung  in  the  cottages  at  Christmas  sing-songs,  and 
which  she  now  for  the  first  time  connected  with  the  play  on 
Mr.  Flippance's  posters. 

"  Hullo,  Jinny,"  said  Master  Peartree  at  last,  her  presence 
slowly  percolating.  He  finished  his  rebellious  lamb  and  patted 
it  forgivingly  on  the  back,  remarking  genially  :  "  Get  up  and 
let's  have  a  squint  at  you."  And  as  it  trotted  out  happily,  he 
threw  its  fleece— too  small  to  wind  up — on  to  a  great  heap  in 
the  corner  and  fell  to  work  on  a  sheep. 

"  You've  just  done  ^em  when  it's  turned  cold,"  protested  Jinny 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  273 

*'  Ay,  'tis  a  pity,"  said  Master  Peartree.  "  But  first  we 
couldn't  get  the  labour,  and  then  that  rined  and  their  wool  was 
too  damp,  but  Oi  need  'em  now  for  the  early  market." 

"  I  know.     Fm  buying  a  horse  there,"  said  Jinny. 

Another  tinge  of  red  appeared  on  the  blameless  skin  of  Will's 
victim. 

"  Methusalem  ain't  damaged  hisself  ?  "  asked  Master  Peartree 
in  concern.  * 

"  Oh,  no,  he's  outside  your  gate,  damaging  your  hedge." 

'•  Then  whatever  do  you  need  another  for  ?  " 

"  Oh,  just  to  ride  over  somebody.  But  I  wish  I'd  known  you 
needed  labour." 

"  Why,  want  a  job  ?  "  grinned  Jim  Puddifoot,  a  giant  in  a 
brimless  hat,  who  was  sharpening  his  shears  on  a  piece  of  steel. 
There  was  a  snigger  from  his  mates. 

"  What's  the  pay  ?  "  said  Jinny,  who  had  been  thinking  of 
Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  lately  gravelled  for  lack  of  purchasers  of  his 
woodland  pickings. 

"  There's  half  a  suvrin  a  hundred,"  said  Master  Peartree  as 
seriously,  "  and  four  quarts  o'  beer." 

A  great  shout  of  laughter  rose  from  the  hired  men  :  only  Will 
went  on  shearing  with  apparent  imperturbability,  while  a  third 
carmine  speck  defaced  the  smooth  surface  of  his  martyred 
sheep. 

"  Where's  the  laugh  ?  "  inquired  Master  Peartree. 

"  Don^t  rob  a  poor  man  of  his  heer^"^  carolled  young  Ravens. 
^^  She  don't  drink,"  he  broke  off  to  explain. 

''  Yes,  I  do,  I  drink  like  a  fish.     Water,  that  is,  like  that  does." 

This  time  even  Master  Peartree  laughed,  while  Jim  Puddifoot, 
raising  his  tin  mug  without  a  handle  to  his  mouth,  cried  ''  Here's 
to  you,"  and  young  Ravens  lifting  up  his  pleasant  voice  trolled 
forth  : 

"  Robin  he  married  a  wife  in  the  West, 
Moppety,  moppety,  monoy 

Little  stabs  and  pricks  were  going  through  Will's  breast,  and 
still  more  through  the  skin  of  his  sheep.  As  the  chorus,  from 
which  Jinny's  little  trill  was  not  excluded,  took  up  : 

''With  a  high  jig  jiggity,  tops  and  petticoats, 
Robin-a-T hrush  cries  mono,'''' 


274  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

it  seemed  to  Will  as  if  Jinny  was  carrying  on  like  a  flash  lady 
in  a  boon  company.  A  high  jig  jiggity,  indeed  !  Releasing  his 
victim  at  last,  he  picked  up  its  fleece  sullenly  and  teased  a  tail 
out  of  it,  wherewith,  rolling  up  the  rest,  he  proceeded  to  tie  the 
bundle  in  a  silence  that  the  singing  rendered  still  grimmer. 

"  What's  that  you've  got  there.  Jinny  ?  "  asked  Master  Pear- 
tree,  becoming  suddenly  aware  of  the  bonnet-box. 

"  That's  for  you,"  she  said. 

"  Me  !     Oi  ain't  got  no  womankind,  thank  the  Lord." 

Again  Master  Peartree  had  touched  unintentionally  the  springs 
of  laughter.  Will  pinned  the  frightened  ewe-lamb,  now  caught 
and  as  dumb  as  himself,  between  his  legs,  and  plucked  a  few  pre- 
liminary bits  from  its  breast  with  his  fingers. 

"  But  it's  Mrs.  Flynt's  bonnet,"  explained  Jinny,  "  and  will 
you  oblige  me  by  taking  it  back  to-night  ?  " 

The  snick  of  young  Flynt's  shears  sounded  savage. 

"  That  Oi  won't,"  said  Master  Peartree,  "  seein'  as  here  stands 
her  boy  Willie  hisself." 

"  Oh,  does  he  ?  "  said  Jinny.     "  I  hadn't  noticed." 

*'  Ay,  that  he  do.  And  even  dedn't,  he  arxed  me  not  to  do 
your  job  agen,  time  Oi  took  in  that  liddle  ole  horn." 

The  new  ovine  martyr  bounded.  Quite  a  patch  of  its  skin  had 
been  replaced  by  blood. 

"  Steady,  Willie,  steady  !  "  cried  Master  Peartree.  "  Oi  was 
afeared  musicianers  ain't  no  good  for  shearing." 

"  It's  this  silly,  jumping  beast,"  growled  Will,  breaking  his 
obstinate  silence. 

Jinny  was  still  tendering  the  bonnet-box  to  Master  Peartree. 
"Well,  give  it  to  him  then." 

"  Can't  he  take  it  straight  ?  "  asked  the  shepherd,  clipping 
busily. 

"  That  silly,  jumping  beast  is  too  much  for  him  as  it  is.  He 
daren't  let  go.     I'll  leave  the  bonnet-box  for  him." 

"  Ain't  no  place  here — 'tis  too  mucky." 

"  '  Buy  a  Broom,'  "  hummed  Jinny,  and  young  Ravens,  smiling, 
seized  a  besom  and  swept  vigorously  at  the  stale  and  droppings. 
"Oh,  I  can't  leave  it  here — the  sheep  might  stave  it  in,"  she 
said. 

"  Leave  it  in  the  store  acrost  the  yard — the  key's  in  the 
padlock,"  said  the  shepherd.  "  Oi  count  Willie'll  take  it  home, 
same  as  he  ain't  cut  hisself  to  pieces." 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  275 

Another  roar  from  the  others — this  time  Master  Peartree 
beamed,  and  it  might  have  gone  ill  with  Will's  lamb  had  the 
shears  not  slipped  from  his  palm. 

"  Well,  but  when  folks  go  woolgathering,"  remarked  Jinny 
blandly,  "  they  forget  things.  I'll  put  it  in  the  store,  but  I  won't 
be  responsible." 

"  Tell  her  I  won't  forget  it,"  roared  Will,  who  w^as  picking  up 
his  shears  in  the  gymnastic  attitude  necessitated  by  the  palpi- 
tating sheep  between  his  legs. 

"  Oi  reckon  she  can  yer  for  herself,"  said  the  shepherd  naively. 

"  Of  course  I  can  hear,"  said  Jinny.  "  But  tell  him  to  tell  his 
mother  that  the  bill's  inside." 

"  Oi  reckon  he  can  yer  too,"  said  the  puzzled  Peartree. 

"  He  doesn't  listen  much  to  women,"  explained  Jinny.  "  You 
ask  him  if  his  family  wants  anything  else  from  Chipstone." 

"  Well,  there  he  stands — you  can  arx  him,  can't  you  ?  " 

"  Well,  don't  I  stand  here,  too  ?  "  said  Jinny.  "  And  why 
doesn't  he  answer  ?  " 

"  He's  too  shy,"  sniggered  Ravens,  and  burst  out  again  : 

"With  a  high  jig  jiggity^  tops  and  petticoats,'''' 

"  Shut  up  !  "  snarled  Will. 

"  'Twas  you  asked  me  to  sing,"  retorted  Ravens. 

"  That's  so,  Willie,"  said  the  shepherd.  "  You  should  say  you 
loved  to  yer  '  Buy  a  Broom '  and  all  them  old  songs.  Why  don't 
you  answer,  Willie  ?  " 

"  Because  there's  nothing  to  say,"  Will  roared.  "  We  don't 
want  nothing  whatever  from  her."  He  was  not  often  so  ungram- 
matical,  but  anger  knows  no  pedantry. 

"  Well,  why  couldn't  he  say  so  at  once  ?  "  said  Jinny,  and 
whistling  '""  A  dashing  young  man  from  Buckingham^'''' — v/histling 
was  a  new  brazenness  in  Will's  ears — she  picked  her  way  across 
the  miry  yard  to  the  weather-boarded,  tarred,  and  tile-roofed 
structure  that  stood  on  six  mushroom-topped  pillars,  whose 
smoothness  offered  no  purchase  for  rats.  Ascending  the  steep 
steps,  she  deposited  the  bonnet-box  betwixt  the  chicken-corn 
and  the  eggs.  While  padlocking  the  door  again,  she  saw  to  her 
surprise  that  Methusalem  was  inside  the  gate,  labouring  towards 
her  through  the  mud.  The  faithful  animal,  impatient  for  her, 
had  evidently  lifted  the  latch  with  its  nose,  aided  perhaps  by  its 
teeth..    The  tears  came  into  her  eyes  :    some  one  at  least  did 


276  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

want  her,  and  there  was  a  long,  affectionate  contact  between 
that  clever,  velvety  nose  and  Jinny's  palm.  Then  she  returned 
to  the  shearing-barn  and  handed  Master  Peartree  the  key. 

"  Good  day  and  thank  you,"  she  said.  "  I  reckon  I  shall  meet 
you  at  the  cattle  fair." 

She  did  not  wait  to  see  if  she  had  drawn  blood  from  the  sacri- 
ficial lamb  ;  but,  rounding  her  lips  again,  whistled  her  way 
jauntily  back  to  her  cart.  As  she  drove  along,  the  sun,  struggling 
through  a  high  cloud-rack,  showed  like  a  great  worn  silver  coin, 
and  the  shorn  sheep  gleamed  fairily  white  on  the  great  green 
pastures.  But  there  was  an  ache  at  her  heart,  which  the  delicious 
wafts  from  the  early-mown  hayfields  only  made  emptier. 


Ill 

The  shabby  little  cart  with  the  legend  of  "  Daniel  Quarles," 
and  the  smart  dog-cart  of  Farmer  Gale,  rolled  side  by  side  of  a 
Monday  morning  in  the  restored  June  sunshine  towards  the 
Chipstone  cattle-market.  Jinny  had  timed  this  coincidence,  and 
meant  to  extract  the  farmer's  opinion  of  the  horses  for  sale.  She 
had  already  gleaned  from  her  grandfather  what  particular  teeth 
were  chronological,  but  such  confidence  as  she  possessed  in  her 
own  "  horse-sense  "  had  been  rudely  dissipated  by  a  volume  on 
the  noble  animal,  which  she  had  unearthed  in  Mother  Gander's 
sanctum.  The  lists  of  diseases  and  defects  from  which  it  might 
suffer  was  paralysing,  and  even  when  it  was  a  thing  she  had 
heard  of — like  grogginess — it  grew  more  sinister  by  being  called 
"  navicular  disease."  Methusalem's  maladies  had  been  simple 
enough,  and  she  had  dared  to  drench  or  anoint  him  with  divers 
remedies.  But  now  that  knowledge  had  dissipated  the  bliss  of 
ignorance — now  that  warts  had  enlarged  into  "  angleberries," 
rheumatism  had  darkened  into  "  felon,"  and  farcy,  quittor,  Ascaris 
megalocephala^  and  countless  other  evils  were  seen  hovering 
around  Methusalem,  thick  as  summer  gnats,  she  marvelled  how 
he  had  staved  them  off.  That  poor  Methusalem  !  An  affec- 
tionate animal  by  nature  was  the  horse, — the  book  told  her — ^he 
wanted  to  please  man,  only  sometimes  he  was  in  agony  and  the 
fiesh  could  not  obey.  Good  heavens,  what  if  sometimes  when 
she  was  in  a  hurry  to  get  home,  she  had  wronged  Methusalem, 
even  in  her  thoughts  !  Remorsefully,  and  with  a  new  and 
morbid  anxiety,  she  caressed  his  delicate,  nose,  amazed  at  her 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  277 

ancient,  easy  assurance  of  his  immortality.  It  even  shook  her 
faith  in  the  all-sufficiency  of  the  Spelling-Book  that  it  contained 
no  intimation  of  the  ills  that  horseflesh  is  heir  to. 

And  the  animal  she  had  now  to  buy  for  Mr.  Flippance  might 
be  affected  with  all  or  any  of  these  ills,  and  even  if  one  could 
detect  such  obvious  defects  as  v/indgalls,  spavin,  thorough-pin,  or 
broken  wind,  how  avoid  a  crib-biter  or  a  wind-sucker,  how 
grapple  with  the  bot-fly,  two  hundred  of  which  could  hook  them- 
selves horribly  to  a  single  equine  stomach,  or  with  the  still  more 
formidable  Palisade  Worm,  which  even  its  name  of  Strongylus 
armatus  could  scarcely  w^orsen,  a  thousand  of  it  having  been 
counted  by  a  patient  authority  on  a  surface  of  two  inches,  and 
its  census  taken  at  a  million  for  a  single  horse  ! 

Farmer  Gale,  however,  failed  to  throw  much  light  on  these 
alarming  questions,  which  he  did  not  know,  indeed,  were  being 
asked.  His  conversation  kept  gliding  away  to  his  grievances, 
for  it  consisted,  like  that  of  most  farmers,  of  grumbles.  Usually 
these  started  from  the  little  string-tied  sample  bags  of  threshed 
grain  he  carried  in  his  pocket  to  be  blown  and  tasted  by  hard- 
bargaining  customers.  But  to-day,  though  he  was  not  bound 
for  the  corn-market,  he  was  nevertheless  not  to  be  baulked  of 
his  grievances.  They  were  not,  this  time,  against  Nature,  but 
against  Man ;  for,  as  the  fields  they  passed  showed,  the  corn  was 
particularly  forward.  It  was  not  Providence  that  had  run  down 
wheat  to  thirty  shillings  a  quarter.  Free  Trade  was  in  reality 
the  ruin  of  free  Britain.  For  the  labour  of  Continental  slaves, 
who  went  with  the  soil,  and  were  sold  with  it  like  cattle,  who 
subsisted  on  black  bread,  skim-milk,  and  onions,  was  brought 
into  competition  with  that  of  the  freeborn  Briton,  who  must 
thus  be  dragged  down  to  the  same  level. 

The  bluff,  freeborn  Briton  was  Farmer  Gale's  favourite  role, 
and  his  ruddy  face,  grey  bowler,  'and  smart  gaiters  made  him 
sympathetic  enough  superficially,  while  the  potent  landowner's 
consideration  for  Jinny's  religious  necessities  had  not  failed  to> 
evoke  a  flattered  gratitude  in  her  humble  breast  when  they  drove 
together  of  a  Sunday  to  their  respective  chapels.  This  amiable 
image  of  himself  the  breezy  Briton  was  now  destined  to  shatter. 
For  after  some  critical  comment  on  the  ploughing  of  the  fields 
they  passed  and  the  activities  of  the  poachers — he  would  certainly 
have  to  get  rid  of  that  suspicious  character,  "  Uncle  Lilliwhyte," 
who  occupied  a  cottage  badly  needed  for  a  farm-hand — he  pointed 


278  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

out  the  impossibility  of*  building  another  cottage  as  Jinny  had 
so  crudely  suggested.     Prices  were  simply  ruinous. 

"  I  tell  my  labourers  as  man  to  man,"  he  said  emphatically, 
"  that  they  can't  have  regular  employment  and  their  present 
wages.  Take  your  choice,  boys,  says  I.  Look  at  other  countries, 
do  they  get  more  than  their  six  or  seven  shillings  a  week  ?  No ! 
Then  that's  what  you'll  have  to  come  down  to." 

"  But  how  can  they  live  on  it  ?  "  asked  Jinny. 

"  How  can  farmers  live  ?  "  he  retorted.  "  We  must  go  by  the 
price  of  corn." 

''  But  did  you  go  by  the  price  of  corn  after  the  Battle  of 
Waterloo  ?  "  asked  Jinny  shrewdly.  "  For  I  remember  Gran'fer 
once  telling  me  you  got — I  mean  your  father  got — a  hundred 
shillings  a  quarter  then,  yet  folks  were  so  starved  they  went 
burning  the  ricks." 

"  I  w^as  only  a  baby  then.     I  can't  say  what  happened." 

"  But  the  same  thing  happened  nearer  our  time,"  she  reminded 
him,  thinking  of  the  Bidlake  tragedy. 

"  Oh,  that  silly  rioting  and  machine-smashing.  That  always 
came  out  of  the  poor  not  understanding  politics.  If  things  were 
bad  after  Waterloo,  it  was  all  Bony's  work.  And  as  for  the 
unrest  twenty  years  ago,  we  caught  that  from  France,  too,  I 
remember  dad  telling  me.  They  had  risen  against  their  king — 
such  an  unsettled  people.  But  to-day  it's  our  own  British 
Government  that's  the  enemy,  and  the  money  we  farmers  have 
lost  this  year  is  something  dreadful." 

"  But  you  don't  look  as  starved  as  some  of  our  labourers' 
families.  I've  seen  the  Pennymole  children  crying  for  dry 
bread,  and  the  father  saying,  *  I  darsn't  cut  you  no  more — do, 
ye'll  have  none  Saturday.'  And  Mr.  Pennymole's  always  worked 
for  you." 

"  You  don't  understand  politics,  Jinny." 

"  I  understand  poverty.  The  Pennymoles  are  better  off,  now 
they've  got  two  boys  grown  up  and  earning  sixpence  a  day.  But 
I've  seen  Mrs.  Pennymole  making  tea  with  charred  bread,  and 
her  husband  compelled  to  steal  the  cabbages  left  for  the  cows.  .  .  . 
Oh,  I  oughtn't  to  have  said  that,"  she  added  in  alarm. 

"  You  certainly  oughtn't !  Compelled  to  break  the  Eighth 
Commandment — a  pretty  doctrine  !  i\nd  such  liars,  too.  I 
saw  quite  a  little  girl  munching  a  turnip  she'd  just  filched  from 
my  field,  and  when  I  complained  to  her  mother,  the  woman 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  279 

unblushingly   said,    '  'Tis    me    fats   her    up    with    swedes    and 
turnips.'  " 

"  They  can't  see  their  children  hunger." 

"  They  can  put  some  of  them  in  the  poorhouse." 

"  Look  at  the  mites  there,  white  and  half-starved.  Sometimes 
I've  got  to  deliver  a  parcel  to  Mr.  Jims,  the  porter,  and  I  hear 
the  Master  thrashing  'em  with  a  stick." 

"  And  it's  what  boys  need — even  my  brat.  Carrying  parcels, 
indeed  !  "     He  stopped  abruptly. 

''  Well,  but  they  make  the  old  folks  of  eighty  and  ninety  scour 
the  stone  steps  and  do  the  washing  1  " 

"  They  needn't  go  in — they  can  get  relief  from  the  parish." 

"  The  parish  !  Eighteenpence  a  w^eek  for  the  family  when  the 
father's  bedridden." 

"  There's  the  parish  loaves  !  " 

"  Have  you  ever  seen  one  r  Half-baked,  without  real  crust, 
all  raw  and  soft,  where  it  stuck  to  the  next  loaf." 

"  Beggars  can't  be  choosers.  Besides,  there's  plenty  of  work 
after  harvest." 

"  Yes,  even  for  babies  of  six,"  said  Jinny  bitterly.  "  And  to 
keep  boys  from  their  beds  after  hard  field-work.  And  at  White 
Notley  where  they  make  the  silk,  there's  little  girls  standing 
on  stools  to  reach  the  weaving-desk." 

"  If  you  understood  politics,"  Farmer  Gale  persisted,  "  you'd 
understand  that  prices  make  themselves,  and  that  what  we  get 
with  one  hand  we  have  to  give  away  with  the  other.  Have  you 
ever  heard  of  the  Income  Tax  now  ?  " 

"  No,"  admitted  Jinny. 

"  Ha  !  You'd  change  your  tune  if  you  had  to  pay  a  shilling 
on  every  pound  you  earned.  But  that's  merely  the  last  straw 
that  breaks  the  camel's  back,  for  it  isn't  only  as  a  farmer  I'm  put 
upon.     But  think  of  the  Malt  Tax  !     It's  simply  a  scandal." 

"  Is  it  ?  I  should  have  thought  'twas  six  shillings  a  w^eek 
would  be  the  scandal."  Her  eyes  and  cheeks  blazed  prettily, 
and  she  was  beginning  to  shelve  the  idea  of  consulting  her 
companion  at  the  horse-market. 

"  I  don't  say  you're  altogether  wrong,"  conceded  Farmer  Gale, 
admiring,  despite  himself,  her  fire  and  sparkle.  "  But  it's  the 
Government  that's  responsible.  There  was  a  great  old  meeting 
t'other  day  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre  in  London.  Two  thousand 
people,  if  a  man.     The  Duke  of  Richmond  he  up  and  said  by 


28o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Heaven  we've  got  to  have  Protection,  and  we  will  have  it.  Oh, 
it  was  a  grand  speech.  I  went  up  for  it  express.  And  we've 
had  a  meeting  of  farmers  down  here,  too,  and  we're  going  to 
wake  up  the  country,  we  Essex  chaps." 

"  Are  you  ?  "  said  Jinny,  secretly  amused  at  this  "  furriner's  " 
complacent  identification  of  himself  with  her  county. 

"  You  wait !     We're  going  to  come  out  with  a  Proclamation." 

"  But  that's  a  Royal  thing,"  said  Jinny. 

"  Not  always  :  besides  we  shall  end  with  God  save  the  Queen, 
Yes,  that's  it :  '  Down  with  the  Malt  Tax  and  God  save  the 
Queen !  '  And  the  beginning :  '  To  our  worthy  labourers, 
greeting.'     I'll  draw  that  up  soon  as  I  get  home." 

''  I  should  offer  'em  ten  shillings  a  week,"  said  Jinny. 

"  You're  joking  !  " 

"  I'm  dead  earnest.  A  family  can't  live  under  ten  shillings  a 
week.  Then  they  wouldn't  want  to  shoot  your  rabbits  and  steal 
your  turnips  and  cabbages." 

"  Prices  make  themselves,  I  tell  you.  Folks  can't  have  more 
than  they're  worth.  Why,  my  dad  paid  as  much  as  thirteen 
shillings  a  week  to  our  old  looker,  Flynt,  when  he  had  his  strength. 
Yes,  though  nobody  ever  suspected  he  got  more  than  twelve." 

"  But  besides  his  duties  as  bailiff  he  had  to  see  after  feeding 
the  stock  night  and  morning,  including  Sundays." 

"  That  was  why  my  father  paid  him  the  extra  shilling.  And  you 
can't  say  I  haven't  treated  him  generously  over  the  farmhouse." 

"  I  wonder  he  could  bring  up  such  a  large  family  so  genteelly," 
mused  Jinny  at  a  tangent. 

"  The  more  the  easier.  A  brat  of  four  can  scare  the  crows  : 
the  only  pity  is  that  his  boys  wouldn't  stay  on  the  land." 

"  What  was  there  to  stay  for  ?  I  think  there  ought  to  be  a 
law  that  nobody  gets  under  ten  shillings,"  persisted  Jinny. 

"  What  a  blessing  we  haven't  got  women  over  us,"  said  the 
farmer,  smiling  at  a  heresy  too  unreasonable  for  argument. 
"  Men  Governments  are  bad  enough,  but  W'omen  would  drive  us 
to  the  workhouse." 

"  And  what  about  the  Queen  ?  "  asked  Jinny. 

"  Well,  what  about  the  Queen  ?  "  he  repeated  vaguely. 

"  Isn't  the  Queen  a  woman  ?  " 

*'  The  Queen  a  woman  !  "  He  was  dazed.  "  But  she  doesn't 
really  govern — not  nowadays.     It's  Lord  John  !  " 

*'  Well  then,  vv^hat  about  Queen  Elizabeth  ?  " 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  281 

"  Ah,  that  was  some  time  back,"  he  said  evasively, 

"Yes,  she  put  on  the  crown  in  1558,  November  17,"  quoted 
Jinny  from  that  Spelling-Book. 

"  I  didn't  know  you  were  so  well  up  in  history,"  he  said 
admiringly.     "  I  reckon  you're  ready  at  ciphering  too  ?  " 

"  How  could  I  do  my  work  without  it  ?  " 

"  Ah,  that's  true.     And  a  good  hand  at  a  pen,  I  suppose  ?  '' 

"  I  can  scratch  what  I  want." 

"  Ah  !  " 

He  fell  silent. 

"  You  don't  play  the  piano  ?  "  he  asked  after  a  pause. 

"  No,"  said  Jinny.  "  Only  the  horn."  And  she  blew  gaily 
upon  it :  whereupon  to  her  surprise  and  satisfaction — for  she 
had  forgotten  him.,  and  it  was  necessary  to  tie  him  up  against 
the  sheep — Nip  appeared,  tearing  from  the  rear.  Farmer  Gale 
watched  musingly  the  operation  of  confining  him  to  his  basket 
by  one  of  those  pieces  of  hoop-borne  rope  that  had  excited  the 
speculation  of  Mr.  Elijah  Skindle. 

"  I  suppose  you  could  play  a  polka  on  it,"  he  remarked. 

Jinny  obliged  with  a  few  bars  of  the  "  Buy  a  Broom." 

"  If  you  had  a  piano,"  he  observed  with  growing  admiration, 
"  I  expect  you'd  soon  learn  to  play  it  on  that." 

Jinny  shook  her  head.  "  I  shall  never  have  the  time.  There's 
the  goats,  and  the  garden,  and  Gran'fer,  and  Methusalem " 

"  Nearly  all  g's,"  laughed  Farmer  Gale,  exhilarated  by  his 
own  erudition. 

"  And  isn't  Methusalem  a  gee  ?  "  flashed  Jinny,  and  exhilarated 
him  further  by  her  prodigious  wit. 

They  were  both  smiling  broadly  as,  just  outside  the  market, 
they  came  upon  Will  leaning  against  a  lime-tree,  a  pipe  between 
his  teeth  and  a  darkness  palpable  on  his  forehead  despite  its 
"  ginger  "  aureola. 

Jinny's  smile  died  and  her  heart  thumped.  Instantaneously 
she  decided  that  as  the  farmer  had  seen  them  together  at  "  The 
Black  Sheep,"  to  ignore  Will  absolutely  would  be  to  betray 
their  quarrel  to  the  world. 

"  Fine  morning !  "  she  cried  as  the  vehicles  passed.  Will 
sullenly  touched  his  hat. 

He  was  amazed  that  the  Cornish  potentate  should  countenance 
her  presence,  so  incongruous  amid  this  orgie  of  untempered 
masculinity,   this  medley  of  unpetticoated  humanity  of  every 


282  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

rank  and  class,  of  which  drovers  twirling  branches  or  leaning  on 
sticks  formed  the  ground  pattern :  small  farmers  rubbing 
shoulders  with  smart-gaitered  gentry  in  frilled  shirts ;  blue- 
aproned  butchers  with  scissors  at  breast  jostling  peasants  in 
grimy  smock-frocks  and  squash  hats  or  ruddy,  whiskered  old 
squires  and  great  grazier  farmers  in  blue,  gilt-buttoned  coats, 
white  flap  buff  waistcoats,  and  white  pot  or  broad-brimmed 
hats;  still  more  elegant  town  types  in  glossy,  straight-brimmed 
cylinders  and  double-breasted,  green  frock-coats  galling  the  kibes 
of  bucolic,  venerable-bearded  ancients  in  fusty  sleeved  waistcoats 
and  greasy  high-hats,  who  blew  their  noses  with  black  fingers. 
It  was  a  fantasia  of  pipes  and  caps,  of  immaculate  collars  and 
dirty  scarves,  of  broadcloth  cutaways  and  filthy  Cardigan 
jackets,  of  top-booted  buckskins  and  corduroy  trousers  tied  with 
string  below  the  knee.  As  Jinny  and  Farmer  Gale  alighted,  and 
mingled  with  this  grotesque  mob  swirling  around  the  pens  in  the 
sunshine.  Will's  heart  was  hot  with  resentment  against  the  girl 
who,  while  rejecting  the  counsel  and  co-operation  of  her  old 
friend  in  the  great  horse -deal,  had  brazenly  accepted  the  guidance 
of  a  bumptious  "  furriner."  .  How  shamelessly  she  walked  amid 
that  babel  of  moos,  baas,  grunts,  shouts,  and  bell-ringing,  as  if 
here  was  her  natural  place.  Really,  to  see  smoke  puffing  publicly 
out  of  her  mouth,  as  it  had  puffed  privately  out  of  that  Polly's, 
would  hardly  be  surprising  now.  And  the  men  were  looking 
after  her,  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  that,  appraising  her  as  if 
she,  too,  was  in  the  market.  He  could  not  but  feel  a  faint  relief 
that  she  was  under  substantial  masculine  escort,  however 
abhorred. 

The  market-place,  along  which  our  quite  unconscious  Jinny 
was  now  making  so  indiscreet  a  tourney,  was  constructed  outside 
the  town  proper,  bordered  on  two  sides  by  lime-trees  and  open 
to  the  sky  save  in  the  auction-room  and  bar,  where  walls  and 
roofing  gave  a  grateful  shade,  though  the  company  in  either  did 
not  contribute  coolness.  The  cattle  were  shuffiing  about  rest- 
lessly, jostling,  mounting.  The  store  calves  and  bullocks  lay  in 
pens  ;  the  fatted  calves  had  already  been  sold  :  pathetic  plump- 
nesses about  to  be  butchered.  Butchers,  indeed,  were  already 
emerging  from  the  auction-room  leading  struggling  strap-muzzled 
calves  by  head-ropes,  and  holding  on — for  extra  precaution — to 
their  tails. 

"  Poor  creatures  !  "  saidL  Jinny,  with  tears  coming  to  her  eyes. 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  283 

"  Yes,  a  poor  lot  1  "  assented  Farmer  Gale,  and  if  Will  could 
have  felt  the  flash  of  scorn  that  went  through  Jinny's  heart,  he 
would  have  scowled  less.  There  was  a  store  calf,  stamped  in 
blue,  so  tiny  that  Jinny  longed  to  mother  it.  Here  again  the 
farmer  blundered  :  he  doubted  if  anybody  would  buy  it ;  ajt 
least  it  would  be  killed  instanter  to  be  mixed  with  pork  for 
sausages. 

He  was  a  widower,  Jinny  remembered,  and  the  line  in  the 
Spelling-Book  defining  that  word  floated  suddenly  before  her 
illumined  mind  :  "  Widower — One  who  has  buried  his  wifeP 
There  had  always  seemed  to  her  something  superfluously  sinister 
in  that  definition — as  if  the  husband  had  personally  put  his  wife 
out  of  the  way,  or  at  least  made  sure  she  was  disposed  of.  Was 
a  man  a  widower  whose  wife  had  been  burnt  up,  she  had  wondered 
whimsically.  Or  if  Miss  Gentry  had  been  married  and  gone  to 
sea  and  been  duly  drowned,  would  her  husband  have  been  free 
to  remarry  I  But  for  Farmer  Gale  at  least,  how  pat  was  the 
definition,  she  felt.  He  assuredly  suggested  the  wilful  widower  : 
this  man  without  entrails  of  mercy,  whether  for  the  poor  or  for 
beasts. 

She  moved  away  silently,  trying  to  lose  him,  looking  for  the 
horses.  She  passed  pens  of  sheep,  and  dogs  (only  a  few  of  these, 
and  tied),  and  cows  with  swollen,  oozy  udders.  There  was  a 
sheep  nibbling  at  a  fallen  lime  branch  outside  its  pen,  and  another 
shoving  hard  to  displace  him.  Jinny  picked  it  up  and  gave  it 
to  this  covetous  creature,  who  sniffed  and  then  turned  away. 
There  seemed  to  be  a  sort  of  Spelling-Book  moral  in  it.  Before 
the  pigs  (red-crossed  and  blue-marked)  she  found  Master  Peartree 
in  rapt  contemplation. 

"  The  pegs  be  lookin'  thrifty  and  prosperous,"  he  observed,  in 
response  to  her  asking  how  he  found  himself.  "  They  don't  need 
no  auctioneerer's  gammon." 

"  No  pig  does,"  punned  Jinny. 

"  Ah,  here  w^e  are  !  "  said  a  less  welcome  voice — Jinny  mali- 
ciously referred  Farmer  Gale's  "  we  "  to  his  juxtaposition  with 
the  pigs.  The  uneasy  capping  and  ducking  of  the  shepherd- 
cowman  before  his  master,  and  his  moving  off  towards  his  own 
animals,  suggested  that  pigs  were  a  private  passion  with  Master 
Peartree.  But  he  had  brought  up  the  memory  of  the  shearing- 
shed,  and  with  it  the  renewed  thought  of  Will,  and  it  was  a 
tenderer  thought  than  for  the  potentate  at  her  side.     Will  might 


284  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

be  stubborn  and  silly,  but  never,  surely,  would  he  deny  that  no 
family  should  have  less  than  ten  shillings  a  week  :  she  felt 
relieved  she  had  broken  the  ice  between  them,  even  though 
"  Fine  morning  "  was  only  a  little  hole  in  it. 

As  if  echoing  her  thoughts,  "  Fine  morning  !  "  said  the  pig- 
auctioneer  to  Farmer  Gale.  It  was  a  special  mxark  of  attention 
from  this  gentlemanly-looking  man,  elevated  on  a  massive  stool, 
who  wore  gaiters  and  a  great  gleaming  signet-ring  that  showed 
as  he  turned  the  pages  of  a  written  catalogue.  This  was  kept  by 
elastic  strings  in  a  grand  calf  cover,  though  pigskin  would  have 
seemed  more  in  keeping.  Two  acolytes,  standing  on  the  ground, 
scribbled  in  their  lowliness.  Buyers  sat  on  the  rim  of  the  pens, 
with  their  feet  dangling  over  the  pigs,  and  the  pig-drovers 
hovered  near,  in  their  long  high  aprons  of  coarse  brown  sacking. 

Soon  Farmer  Gale  became  as  fascinated  as  Master  Peartree,  for 
the  pigs  did  indeed  look  *'  thrifty  and  prosperous,"  and  as  the 
penful  was  on  the  point  of  falling  to  a  low  bid,  he  nipped  in  and 
secured  a  bargain.  While  he  was  complacently  cutting  away 
bristles,  signing  his  acquisition  with  his  scissors.  Jinny  stole 
away,  feeling  he  was  safely  penned. 

IV 

Will  had  long  since  disappeared  from  her  ken,  but  when  she 
came  to  the  long  roofed  place,  open  at  the  side,  where  beribboned 
and  straw-plaited  hacks  and  draught-horse;:»  were  tied  to  their 
staples,  there  he  was,  chained  just  as  iirmJy  by  a  sort  of  sentinel 
stubbornness.  It  was  as  if  he  was  saying  "  Through  my  body 
first  !  "  The  thrill  his  proximity  gave  her  was  shot  through  with 
a  renewed  resentment  against  this  obviously  undiminished  oppo- 
sition of  his.  But  she  was  resolved  to  meet  him  with  banter 
rather  than  with  anger. 

"  You  buying  horses  ?  "  she  said  genially. 

"  No,  I  am  not  buying  horses  !  "  he  answered  roughly.  "  But 
aren't  you  ashamed  to  be  here — the  only  one  of  your  sex  ?  " 

"  Surely  not  !  "  said  Jinny.     "  Where's  your  eyes  ?  " 

He  looked  round,  wonderingly. 

"  Under  your  nose  1  "  guided  Jinny.  "  There,  isn't  that  a 
mare  ?     And  I  passed  sows  and  ewes  and  heifers  by  the  score." 

"  And  that's  what  you  class  yourself  with  ?  And  then  you 
deny  you  are  lowering  yourself  !  " 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  285 

"  I  always  lower  myself  when  I  get  off  my  cart.'* 

"  Well,  you  get  up  again  !  That's  the  best  advice  I  can  give 
you.     Drive  home  !  " 

"  And  shirk  mv  job  !  " 

"  /'//  do  your  job." 

''  You  !     I  thought  you  were  not.  buying  horses." 

"  You  know  what  I  mean.  How  much  does  old  Flippance 
want  to  give  ?  " 

"  Oh,  he's  not  so  old,"  she  said  evasively.  She  was  scanning 
the  horses  with  troubled  eye,  perturbed  even  more  than  by  her 
ov/n  affairs  by  the  thought  of  the  innumerable  diseases  and 
defects  and  doctorings  which  might  be  lurking  beneath  their 
sheen  of  health  and  vigour.  Her  innocent  faith  undermined  by 
literature  and  Mr.  Flippance's  experience,  she  had  a  cynical  sense 
of  horsey  hypocrisy,  of  whited,  blacked,  or  browned  sepulchres, 
within  which  fearsome  worms  burrowed  in  their  millions.  She 
would  have  gladly  consulted  Will,  had  he  not  been  so  tactlessly 
intrusive.  Even  as  it  was,  she  murmured  encouragingly : 
"  There  doesn't  seem  much  choice  to-day."  Indeed,  the  animals 
were  mostly  huge  shire  horses  with  their  heavily  feathered  fetlocks. 
Of  hackneys  there  were  only  two  or  three. 

"  I  should  take  that  Suffolk  Punch,"  advised  Will,  indicating 
a  chestnut.  "  He'll  have  the  strength  to  draw  the  caravan,  and 
doesn't  look  so  clumsy  and  hairy-legged  as  the  others." 

"  I  like  the  star  on  his  forehead,"  said  Jinny.  "  But  I  can't 
bear  a  cropped  tail,  it's  cruel.  Besides,  Mr.  Flippance  hasn't  got 
a  caravan." 

"  Well,  how  does  he  carry  all  that  truck  I  saw  ?  " 

"  Oh,  that  goes  in  wagons  with  horses  just  hired  from  town 
to  town.  They  don't  even  live  in  a  caravan  like  Mr.  Duke's 
got.  No,  but  they  have  a  trap  that  they  drive  over  in,  ahead,  and 
then  Mr.  Flippance  uses  the  trap  to  look  for  a  pitch  to  hire,  or 
to  bring  home  naphtha  for  the  lamps  or  timber  for  mending  the 
theatre — something  always  goes  wrong,  he  says." 

"  Then  I'd  have  the  Cleveland  ?  " 

"  Which  is  the  Cleveland  ?  " 

"  That  tall  bay  with  black  points  and  clean  legs.  I've  hardly 
ever  seen  one  at  an  Essex  fair,  but  they're  strong  as  plough - 
horses  and  handsome  as  hackneys." 

"  But  don't  you  think  that  couple  there  are  handsomer  ?  " 

"  The    black — of    course !     They're    a    pair    of    real    carriage 


286  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

horses.  Splendid  action,  I  reckon.  But  Mr.  Flippance  won't 
want  anything  so  showy  as  that." 

"  Just  what  a  show  does  want,"  laughed  Jinny.  "  You  see  he 
also  rides  about  the  town,  blowing  on  the  horn  and  scattering 
handbills." 

"  I  didn't  understand  that.  And  can  he  blow  a  horn  as 
well  ?  " 

"  As  well  as  who  ?  " 

"  As  me  !  "  said  WiU  boldly.  "  And  when  am  I  to  have  my 
gloves  ?  "  He  sought  her  hand  "in  the  press  and  it  was  not 
withdrawn. 

"  When  you  go  blowing  it  for  Mr.  Flippance  in  his  next  town," 
she  laughed  happily. 

"  Then  I  must  choose  the  horse  I  blow  behind,"  he  said  with 
an  air  of  liu^htness.  "  What's  the  most  old  Flippance  will  go 
to  ?  " 

"  Thirty  pounds  is  his  last  word,  I'm  afraid." 

"  Much  too  little.  But  we'll  see.  Now  I'll  take  you  back  to 
your  cart." 

"  What  for  ?  "  Her  hand  unclasped.  "  I've  got  to  buy  the 
horse,  I  must  wait  here." 

"  But  they'U  be  taken  in  there."  He  pointed  to  the  cattle 
auction-chamber.  "  And  there's  no  need  for  you  to  bid  per- 
sonally." 

"  I  shall  enjoy  bidding." 

"  Among  all  those  men  I     You  w^on't  even  get  a  look  in." 

The  chamber  was  indeed  besieged  by  a  seething  crowd,  some 
standing  on  tiptoe,  astrain  to  get  their  bids  marked. 

"  I'll  borrow  one  of  those  pig-dealers'  stools,"  she  said, 

"  Do  be  serious,  Jinny." 

''  And  do  you  suppose  my  work  is  a  joke  ?  " 

"  But  you  can't  squeeze  in  that  crowd  ?  Suppose  we  find 
out  the  owner  and  get  one  of  the  black  horses  by  private 
treaty  ?  " 

"  And  pay  the  market  fee  ?  Not  me  !  Besides,  he'll  want  a 
top  price  and  there's  more  fun  and  chances  in  bidding.  Oh  look  ! 
that  poor  Cleveland's  got  himself  all  tangled  up  !  Do  help 
him  !  " 

It  was  not  easy  to  release  the  animal  which,  having  encoiled 
its  legs  in  the  rope  attached  to  its  staple,  was  getting  more  and 
more  frightened  as  its  own  efforts  lassoed  it  the  tighter.     Jinny's 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  287 

heart  beat  fast  lest  Will  should  get  kicked,  and  still  faster 
at  the  nonchalance  with  which  he  accomplished  his  dangerous 
task. 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said  sweetly,  when  the  animal  stood 
shaking,  but  quiet. 

"  It's  not  your  horse." 

"  But  I  a-ked  you  to  do  it." 

"Then  you  might  do  what  I  ask  you  ?  "  he  retorted. 

She  frowned.  She  did  not  like  this  tricky  tit-for-tat.  It  was 
unchivalrous.     It  undid  his  deed  of  derring-do. 

"  You  must  not  interfere  with  my  business,"  she  said  severely, 
and  swept  to  the  nearest  door. 

"  Jinny  !     Where  are  you  going  ?  "     He  had  followed  her. 

"  To  the  bar  !  "  she  said  solemnly,  perceiving  the  nature  of  the 
forbidden  chamber.  "  Why  can't  I  have  a  drink  and  a  smoke  ? 
What  will  you  take  ?  " 

He  gasped,  believing  her  serious.  So  female  smoking  even  in 
public  was  no  impossible  foreboding.  To  this  buffet,  blockaded 
by  laughing,  swilling,  tobacco-clouded  masculinity,  mitigated 
only — if  not  indeed  aggravated — by  a  barmaid,  Jinny  was 
actually  going  to  wriggle  her  w^ay  !  And  the  buffet  did  not  even 
sell  milk  ! 

"  You  shan't  go,"  he  said  in  a  low  hoarse  tone,  clutching  at 
her  arm.     "  By  God,  you  shan't  !  " 

But  he  succeeded  only  in  grasping  her  dangling  horn,  and,  in 
her  dart  fonvard,  it  was  left  in  his  hand.  "  I  didn't  ask  you  to 
^  take '  that !  "  she  laughed  back  as  she  crossed  the  threshold.  "  I 
meant,  what's  your  drink  ?  " 

"  Jinny  !  "  he  breathed,  his  voice  frozen. 

"  Mine's  ink  !  "  she  called  out  gaily,  and  the  males,  now  aware 
of  her  presence,  vied  with  one  another  to  pass  the  bottle  and 
pen  on  the  counter  to  her,  together  with  the  little  bowl  of  sand, 
all  of  which  she  bore  to  the  quiet  side  of  the  room,  where  a 
protracted  desk  supplied  facilities  for  notes  and  accounts.  Re- 
assured, but  still  resentful.  Will  stood  at  the  door,  awkwardly 
holding  her  horn  with  its  bit  of  broken  girdle,  and  watching  her 
protectively  as  she  scribbled  on  a  piece  of  paper,  and  blotted  it 
with  the  sand.  Then  coming  back  to  him,  she  took  away  her 
horn — not  without  a  reproachful  glance  at  the  snapped  cord — 
and  putting  her  folded  paper  into  his  hand  instead,  glided  past 
him  and  was  lost  in  the  hurly-burly. 


288  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Disconsolate,  yet  excited,  he  opened  the  note,  and  read  this 
wholly  unexpected  quatrain  : 

Swearing 

Of  all  the  nauseous  complicated  crimes 
That  both  infect  and  stigmatize  the  Times  ; 
There's  none  that  can  with  impious  Oaths  compare, 
Where  Vice  and  Folly  have  an  equal  Share, 

This  rebuke,  drawn  from  the  endless  thesaurus  of  "The  Uni- 
versal Spelling-Book,"  and  not  original  even  in  spelling,  Will 
believed  to  be  Jinny's  own  composition,  and  as  inspired  as  it 
was,  alas !  deserved.  Wonderful  that  Jinny  could  sit  down  in 
all  that  turmoil,  in  that  smoky,  gin-laden  atmosphere,  and  pour 
out  these  pure  bursts  of  song.  Surely  Martin  Tupper,  the  mighty 
bard  of  the  day,  whose  renown  had  reached  even  Will's  illiterate 
ears,  could  not  better  them.  And  what  was  he,  Will,  beside  her, 
he  whose  ov/n  claim  to  literature  rested  upon  an  imaginary 
exposition  of  Daniel  !  Smarting  with  self-reproach,  he  deposited 
the  note  where  once  her  glove  had  rested — it  should  be  a  text  of 
warning  henceforward. 

But  if  she  was  thus  marvellous,  still  more  necessary  was  it  to 
withdraw  her  from  these  unfitting  atmospheres,  and  he  returned 
more  tenaciously  than  ever  to  his  equine  watch,  like  a  picket  in 
a  camp. 


Meanwhile  Jinny  had  blotted  herself  out  in  the  crowd  around 
the  sheep-auctioneer,  who  towered  in  the  midst  of  his  dirty-white 
sea,  yelling  "  All  going  at  thirty-five  shillings  apiece !  "  or  striding 
from  pen  to  pen  across  the  bars,  while  the  buyers  ruddled  their 
lots  with  their  mark,  and  the  drovers  cleared  for  him  ever  fresh 
passages  among  the  swirling  sheep,  and  acolytes  kept  parallel  to 
him  outside  the  fold  with  their  ink-horns  and  notebooks. 

But  she  had  only  fallen  from  the  frying-pan  into  the  oven,  for 
suddenly  she  becam.e  conscious  that  Farmer  Gale  was  again  at 
her  side. 

"  Got  your  horse  yet  ?  "  he  inquired,  with  his  breeziest  British 
smile. 

"  Sale  not  on  yet,"  she  answered  coldly. 

"  Then  come  and  see  the  bullocks  sell." 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  289 

Jinny,  pleading  she  must  go  to  the  horse  sale-room,  moved 
away  towards  the  congested  chamber.     He  followed,  smiling. 

"  Why,  that  is  where  they're  selling  the  bullocks  now,"  he 
said. 

Her  brain  was  seeking  for  a  further  pretext,  when  she  caught 
sight  of  the  sentinel  Will  frowning  furiously  in  her  direction.  If 
she  slipped  in  now,  further  argument  from  him  would  be  nipped 
in  the  bud,  and  silently  she  followed  the  robustious  widower 
through  the  hole  he  bored  into  the  seething  mass. 

The  entry  of  a  female  attracted  no  general  attention,  for  it  was 
impossible  for  the  squeezed  buyers  to  see  more  than  the  backs 
and  sides  of  their  immediate  neighbours,  even  if  all  eyes  had  not 
been  on  the  auctioneer  and  on  the  beasts  which  occupied  the 
central  ring,  in  the  brief  moments  of  their  glory. 

He  stood  at  a  raised  desk,  this  master  of  the  revels,  in  his 
shirt-sleeves,  with  a  little  stick  for  hammer :  a  clean-shaven  man, 
with  the  back  of  his  long  head  almost  straight,  and  further 
lengthened  and  straightened  by  the  continuation  down  it  of  the 
central  parting  of  his  neatly  combed  hair ;  the  face  bulging 
forward  and  into  a  massive  mouth  and  chin.  He  was  flanked  by 
two  young  bookkeepers,  one  spotty-faced  and  spectacled  in  a 
Scotch  cap  and  loud  tweeds,  and  one  bareheaded  and  demure  ; 
and  around  him  on  the  rising  benches  of  an  amphitheatre  rose  a 
mass  of  masculinity  surmounted  by  small  boys.  Drovers  chevied 
in  the  "  lots  " —  stuck  with  paper  numbers — through  large 
double  wooden  gates,  and  back — after  their  great  moments  in 
the  ring — to  their  pens,  through  a  smaller  folding  gate.  The  beasts 
did  not  always  listen  proudly  to  their  praises  :  the  more  modest, 
instead  of  showing  off  their  beauties,  preferred  to  nose  restfully 
about  the  straw  of  the  floor,  and  had  to  be  prodded  into  circular 
activity  by  the  sticks  of  drovers  who,  as  the  bullocks  went 
sullenly  round,  looked  like  a  prose  variety  of  picador  in  a  toy 
arena.  And  throughout  fell  the  auctioneer's  patter,  sometimes 
suave  and  slow,  but  for  the  most  part  staccato  and  breathless. 
"  Who  will  say  seventy  shillings  ?  Property  of  Mr.  Purley  of 
Foxearth  Farm.  And  a  crown.  You  all  know  Foxearth  Farm. 
You  all  know  the  hurdle-maker.  And  his  herds  are  even  better 
than  his  hurdles  !     Who  makes  level  money  ?     Going,  going " 

"  No,  don't  you  be  going,"  said  Farmer  Gale  smilingly.  For 
the  girl  had  begun  to  edge  out.  She  feJt  herself  uncomfortably 
pressed.     Why,  it  almost  seemed  as  if  Farmer  Gale's  arm  were 

T 


290  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

round  her  waist.  Good  heavens,  it  was  !  And  what  was  more, 
his  body  barred  her  movement  outwards. 

"  Take  away  your  arm,"  she  whispered  fiercely. 

"  I'm  protecting  you  from  the  crowd,"  he  whispered  back. 
"  They'll  break  your  ribs  in." 

"  Take  it  away  !  "  she  hissed.  But  he  feigned  not  to  hear,  and 
his  eye  being  now  on  the  arena,  not  on  her,  she  was  too  shy  to 
struggle  and  make  a  sensation.  The  horn  in  her  hand  also 
impeded  her  efforts  to  extricate  herself.  Furious  and  flushing, 
she  was  forced  to  stand  there,  while  the  auctioneer's  prosy  patter 
beat  down  on  her  brain  in  a  maddening  ceaseless  pour  :  "  Selling 
to  the  highest  bidder — no  reserve.  A  big  bullock.  In  your 
hands.  Start  the  bidding,  please.  To  be  sold  without  reserve, 
I  say.  How  much  ?  Come  on  !  Look  at  his  fat  !  Thank  you. 
Seven  pound,  fifteen — nine  pound,  ten — a  great  big  bullock. 
I'm  selling  him  without  reserve.  He  is  to  be  sold  whatever  he 
fetches.  Ten  pound,  two  and  six.  Going  !  No,  not  gone  yet ! 
Going !  " 

"  I  must  go  !  "  repeated  Jinny.     "  I  must  inspect  the  horses." 

"  You'll  see  them  better  in  the  ring  here." 

"  Let  me  go  !     I'll  never  drive  to  chapel  with  you  again  1  " 

"  Why  not.  Jinny  ?  "  He  bent  dowm  with  sudden  passion,  all 
the  cautious  Cornishman's  long-wavering  desires  clenched  by  the 
discovery  of  her  high  educational  endowments  and  concreted  by 
actual  contact  with  the  desirable  waist.  "  Why  not  go  to  chapel 
together  and  be  done  with  it,  once  for  all  •?  " 

"  Done  with  what  ?  "  she  murmured,  reddening. 

"  Separating.     Let  me  keep  off  the  crowd  always." 

"  Hush  1     They'll  hear  you." 

"  No,  they  won't.     What  do  you  say  ?  " 

"  Be  quiet !     I  want  to  hear  the  bidding." 

"  Shall  w^e  publish  the  banns  ?  " 

Jinny  closed  her  lips  obstinately. 

"  Won't  you  speak  ?  You  know  I  can  buy  out  half  Little 
Bradmarsh." 

In  her  silence  the  voice  of  the  auctioneer  possessed  the 
situation. 

"  The  best  heifer  for  the  last — maiden  heifer,  beautiful  quality. 
Fourteen  pound.  Marvellous  creature,  marvellously  cheap. 
Won't  anybody  start  me  ?  "  The  drover  prodded  the  prodigy 
up,  and  she  trotted  round  dismally. 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  291 

"  Fifteen,"  cried  a  squeaky  voice. 

"  Fifteen,"  echoed  the  auctioneer,  cheering  up.  But  his  gloom 
soon  returned.  For  the  bidding  refused  to  advance.  "  Being 
badly  sold,  this  heifer,"  he  wailed. 

"  By  crum,  he's  right  !  "  quoth  the  Cornishman,  pricking  up 
his  ears.  "  Sixteen  pound  !  "  he  cried  aloud,  and  was  already 
congratulating  himself  upon  his  bargain,  when,  like  the  voice  of 
doom,  came  the  squeaky  "  Seventeen  1  " 

Farmer  Gale  was  piqued.     "  Eighteen,"  he  said  surlily. 

"  Twenty  !  " 

It  was  a  staggering  blow.  But  it  only  raised  the  farmer's 
blood.     "  Guineas  !  "  he  cried. 

"  Twenty-two  pounds  !  "  chirped  the  voice. 

"  Twenty-two  pounds  !  "  repeated  the  auctioneer  insatiably. 

Beads  of  perspiration  and  hesitation  appeared  on  the  farmer's 
brow.  In  his  concentration  on  the  problem  his  arm  relaxed. 
Jinny  stepped  aside,  and  men  unconsciously  made  way  for  her. 

"  Guineas  !  "  cried  the  farmer. 

"  Twenty-two  guineas  1  "  repeated  the  auctioneer.  "  A  beauti- 
ful maiden  heifer — never  had  a  calf.     Going " 

But  this  time  Jinny  was  really  gone.  She  would  not  even  risk 
waiting  outside  to  hear  the  result,  but  in  generous  gratitude  at 
her  escape,  she  hoped  he  would  at  least  secure  the  maiden  heifer. 

VI 

The  sight  of  Will  still  at  his  post  suggested  to  her  with  a  little 
qualm  that  he  was  not  so  wrong  :  these  male  environments  were 
not  without  their  drawbacks. 

"  Those  horses  seem  to  fascinate  you,"  she  said,  with  a  little 
tremor  in  her  voice.  Whether  Will  or  the  violence  just  done  to 
her  was  the  cause  of  it,  she  did  not  quite  know.  But  her  mood 
was  melting  and  her  eye  the  brighter  for  a  soft  moisture. 

But  how  was  Will  to  follow  her  vagaries  and  adventures  ? 

"  That's  my  business,"  he  answered  gruffly. 

"  I  thought  it  was  mine,"  she  laughed.  She  was  quite  prepared 
now  to  make  it  a  joint  affair. 

"  You  know  my  opinion  on  that,"  he  said  icily. 

"  You  haven't  changed  it  yet  ?  "  she  bantered. 

"  Why,  what  should  happen  in  these  few  minutes  to  make  me 
change  it  ?  " 


292  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Things  do  happen  in  a  few  minutes,"  she  said  mysteriously. 
"  Why,  I  might  have  come  back  and  bought  up  the  whole  show." 
She  waved  her  horn  comprehensively  over  the  horses. 

*'  What  rubbish  you  do  talk  !  "  he  said  impatientlv. 

"  Do  I  ?  "     She  fired  up.     "  There's  others  think  differently." 

"  If  they  think  differently,  it's  because  they  think  lightly  of 
you." 

"  Lightly,  indeed  !  " 

"  Yes — they  do.     To  drag  you  into  an  indecent  sale-room !  " 

"  Indecent  ?  "  She  flushed,  wondering  if  Will  had  seen  that 
circumambient  arm. 

"  It's  all  indecent — all  that  talk  about  heifers.  I  don't 
wonder  you  blush." 

She  laughed,  relieved.  "  I'm  blushing  for  you.  You  do  talk 
such  rubbish  !  " 

"  There  you  go  with  your  cheek  !  " 

"  It's  only  what  you  just  said  to  me."  ^ 

"  I  said  it  because  you  do  talk  rubbish." 

"  And  you  talk  rubbish  in  saying  it." 

"  Well,  go  to  those  who  talk  sense,  Miss  Boldero  1  "  And  he 
pulled  out  his  pipe  and  matches  with  a  symbolic  gesture. 

''  What  an  obstinate  creature  you  are,  Will !  " 

"  Me  obstinate  !  Why,  ain't  it  your  obstinacy  that  keeps  you 
here,  when  I'm  ready  to  do  your  job  ?  " 

"  I  told  you  I  preferred  to  do  my  own  jobs."  And  with  that 
she  went  straight  up  to  the  black  hackneys,  and  while  Will 
puffed  'volcanically,  she  learnedly  examined  their  teeth  through 
tear-misted  eyes  that  saw  neither  incisors  nor  age-marks.  Then, 
after  carefully  prodding  their  ribs  and  punching  and  poking  them 
about,  as  she  had  seen  purchasers  do  with  bullocks,  she  swept 
haughtily  towards  the  auction  arena,  but  afraid  of  encountering 
the  farmer,  she  hovered  uncertainly  on  the  threshold,  feeling  like 
a  bundle  of  straw  between  two  donkeys. 

Gradually  she  realized,  and  with  enhanced  resentment,  that 
she  was  the  donkey  ;  that  both  these  men  had  deceived  her  in 
representing  the  cattle-arena  as  the  selling-place  for  the  horses. 
By  the  crowd  that  began  to  accumulate  round  the  horses,  and  to 
blot  out  the  patient  sentinel,  as  the  hour  for  their  sale  approached, 
it  became  plain  that  they  would  be  sold  where  they  were  tied, 
and  presently  the  motley  crowd,  swollen  by  many  of  the  cattle- 
auctioneer's  audience,  thrilled  with  the  coming  of  this  heavy- 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  293 

jowled  worthy,  who  had  not  turned  a  hair  of  his  neatly  combed 
chevekire. 

The  biddings  were  not  brisk.  To  Jinny's  joy  only  the  heavier 
animals,  the  plough-horses  and  the  cart-horses,  seemed  in  demand ; 
the  cobs  and  the  ponies  went  for  a  song.  The  sable  steeds  she 
had  selected  as  the  only  suitable  ones  came  late — most  of  the 
animals  had  been  released  from  their  staples  and  led  off  by  their 
new  masters.  To  her  dismay  the  hackneys  were  put  up  as  a 
pair,  and  all  her  pride  seemed  falling  into  ruin.  Fortunately,  not 
provoking  a  bid,  they  were  then  put  up  separately,  and  Jinny 
set  the  ball  rolling  for  the  first  with  a  brazen  o€er  of  ten  pounds. 

For  a  moment  she  thought  gleefully  that  the  horse  was  to  be 
hers  at  that— for  nobody  there  seemed  in  quest  or  in  need  of 
carriage  horses — but  under  the  auctioneer's  scoff  a  few  bargain- 
hunters  soon  raised  it  to  twenty,  and  then  to  Jinny's  alarm — for 
her  margin  was  getting  dangerously  narrow — to  twenty-four. 
At  twenty-five  the  bargain-hunters  fell  off,  and  a  new  voice 
intervened — a  husky  voice  that  seemed  to  mean  business,  and 
whose  every  counter-bid  filled  her  with  dism.ay.  At  its  twenty- 
eight  pounds  the  auctioneer  still  upheld  his  stick  with  scorn  and 
incredulity.  She  was  almost  at  her  bids'  end.  "  Twenty-nine 
pounds,"  she  cried  crushingly.  This  time  the  voice  seemed 
indeed  silenced.  She  fully  expected  the  stick  to  fall.  But  at 
the  first  "  Going,"  though  there  had  been  no  sound,  the  auctioneer 
cried  cheerily,  "  Thirty  pounds."  Evidently  somebody  else  had 
nodded  or  held  up  a  finger.  Inflamed  by  the  fever  of  the 
struggle,  she  was  impelled  to  risk  even  her  own  earnings,  if 
Flippance  would  not  go  so  far.  "  Thirty-one  pounds,"  she  cried 
ringingly.  "  Thirty-one  pounds,"  echoed  the  auctioneer  with  a 
promising  accent  of  finality.  "  Thirty-two  pounds,"  he  added 
instantly,  and  this  silent  competition  was  even  more  crushing 
than  the  huskiest  bid.  It  put  out  her  flame  of  recklessness,  and 
her  heart  sank  with  the  stick,  as  despite  all  the  auctioneer's 
derisory  deprecation,  that  wooden  fi.nger  of  fate  fell  finally  at 
this  truly  absurd  figure. 

Then  the  name  of  the  unseen  silent  buyer  transpired.  "  Mr. 
William  Flynt  1  "  proclaimed  a  familiar  voice.  A  bl^ze  of 
positive  hatred  ran  through  all  Jinny's  being.  The  brute  1  The 
obstinate  pig  !  To  come  interfering  with  her  daily  work,  with 
her  bread  and  butter  !  To  ride  his  will  roughshod  over  hers  ! 
And  not  only  roughrider,  but  coward,  sneak,  traitor  !     Had  he 


294  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

not  wormed  and  wheedled  out  of  her  the  limit  of  her  commission 
and  thus  romped  in,  an  easy  winner  !  And  he  would  take  his 
purchase  to  Mr.  Flippance,  she  supposed.  Yes,  he  was  already- 
paying  in  full- — she  saw  him  now,  near  one  of  the  clerks,  drawing 
a  pocket-book  out  of  the  region  of  his  black  heart ;  he  was  in  a 
hurry,  he  would  hasten  with  the  animal  to  Tony  Flip.  But  not 
so  fast,  O  dashing  young  man  from  Canada  !  Flippance  is  a  man 
of  honour,  he  will  repudiate  the  purchase.  And  the  second 
hackney  still  remains.  The  biter  is  bit — the  pit  you  have  digged 
shall  engulf  you. 

But  what  was  Jinny's  horror  and  indignation  when  this  young 
man  from  Canada,  now  shamelessly  revealed,  instead  of  going 
off  with  his  spoil  to  Mr.  Flippance,  remained  and  ran  up  the 
second  horse  with  his  serpent's  tongue  at  still  greater  speed,  as 
now  cocksure  of  her  limit.  This  time  in  her  fury  she  ventured 
as  far  as  thirty-five — it  was  useless.  With  a  recklessness  still 
more  magnificent  he  cried  "  Forty,"  and  with  a  chill  at  her 
heart  in  curious  contrast  with  the  glow  of  hate  at  it,  she  felt 
that  all  was  over.  Was  it  of  any  use  bidding  even  for  the  few 
mediocre  animals  still  possible  ?  Would  not  this  brutal  mono- 
polist buy  up  the  whole  bunch — even  as  she  had,  oddly  enough, 
hinted  a  few  minutes  before  about  doing  ?  Yes,  there  was  nothing 
his  masterful  obstinacy  would  boggle  at  in  its  resolve  to  crush 
her  v^ill.  He  still  stood  by  the  horse-enclosure  in  unrelaxed 
vigilance.  Before  she  could  arrive  at  any  decision,  her  mind 
was  still  further  unhinged  by  the  simultaneous  appearance  of 
Nip  and  the  advent  of  pandemonium. 

Whether  it  was  Nip  that  had  produced  the  pandemonium,  or 
the  pandemonium  that  had  liberated  Nip,  Jinny  never  knew.  The 
fact  was,  however,  that  Farmer  Gale,  waking  to  find  himself 
outbidden  for  the  heifer  and  disappointed  of  his  maiden,  had 
retreated  fuming  to  his  trap,  and  hearing  Nip's  revolutionary 
yaps  for  freedom  in  th^  adjacent  cart,  had  loosed  him  out  of 
some  vague  instinct  of  malice — kindness  he  called  it  to  himself, 
so  unacknowledged  was  his  desire  to  thwart  the  will  of  the 
creature's  mistress.  A  final  kick  administered  to  the  retreating 
rump — also  apparently  as  a  kindly  encouragement  to  the  freed 
dog's  progress — had  not  proved  conducive  to  the  equilibrium  of 
an  animal  already  deranged  by  a  long-iterated  grievance  and  an 
unexpected  freedom,  and  his  helter-skelter  pelt  through  the 
market-place  not  unnaturally  startled  the  nerves  of  not  a  few 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  295 

fellow-quadrupeds,  already  shaken  by  the  strange  journeyings 
and  novel  experiences  of  the  day.  But  it  was  not  until  the 
sheep  were  reached,  that  Nip's  passing  became  a  public  episode. 
There  had  even  before  been  numberless  difficult  scenes  with  the 
sold  lots  ;  the  effort  to  muster  them  for  their  new  journeyings 
had  sufficiently  taxed  the  lungs  and  tempers  of  men  and  sheep- 
dogs.  When  Nip  appeared,  the  normally  stolid  Master  Peartree 
was  waving  a  giant  red  handkerchief  and  c  creaming  wildly,  while 
demented-seeming  drovers,  formed  into  a  half-ring,  danced  and, 
shrieked  like  savages  at  a  religious  service,  and  waved  sticks 
with  a  ritual  air,  and  the  sheep-dog  leapt  round  and  round, 
chevying  the  flock  in  the  desired  direction.  In  this  delicate 
crisis,  Nip's  rush  of  recognition  at  Master  Peartree  proved  the 
last  straw.  One  super-terrified  wether  threw  the  flock  into  a 
panic.  The  sheep  rushed  to  and  fro  and  everywhere  (save  where 
the  sticks  and  shrieks  pointed)  ;  and  going  thus  everywhere, 
they  went  nowhere,  jumping  on  and  over  one  another's  backs 
as  in  a  game  of  leap-lamb.  Some  darted  back  into  alien  pens, 
and  the  sheep-dog,  itself  distracted,  leapt  from  back  to  back  of 
these,  baying  and  menacing  with  feverish  futility.  It  was  like  a 
stormy  sea  of  sheep,  in  which  man  was  tossed  about  as  in  a 
tempest.  There  were  sheep  standing  on  their  hind  legs  as  if 
dancing,  there  were  men  clinging  on  to  these  legs  or  to  tails  or 
to  rumps,  and  pushing,  pulling,  and  wrestling  with  them,  but 
never  ceasing  to  yell  and  chevy.  Finally  a  rescue  party  appeared 
with  a  five-barred  gate,  which  they  moved  this  way  and  that, 
striving  to  cut  off  at  least  one  of  the  ways  of  escape.  But  this 
only  drove  more  sheep  back  into  the  wrong  pens,  where  they 
seemed  hopelessly  mixed  up  with  lots  still  unsold.  Jinny  had 
never  imagined  sheep  such  lively  and  individual  lunatics.  Now 
the  intruders  were  being  dragged  out  by  the  wool  of  the  head  or 
the  rump,  or  half-carried,  or  wholly  kicked  ;  again  the  five- 
barred  gate  was  brought  into  play,  this  time  to  keep  them  away 
from  the  pens,  and  then,  wherever  the  eye  turned,  were  these 
tempestuous  billows  of  sheep.  They  bounded,  reared,  wrestled, 
danced,  pranced,  flew  wildly  at  tangents  :  some  escaped  towards 
the  town,  and  everywhere  men  screamed,  scurried,  bellowed, 
waved  hands,  or  brandished  sticks.  Nip,  his  head  equally  lost, 
seemed  to  be  doing  every  one  of  these  things  at  once,  whether 
ovine  or  human.  And  Jinny,  in  her  anxiety  to  capture  him,  to 
remove  him,  unseen,  from  the  Witches'  Sabbath  she  feared  he 


296  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

had  called  into  being,  forgot  all  about  the  other  possible,  if 
inferior,  horses.  By  the  time  she  had  refastened  Nip  and 
returned  to  the  sale,  the  stick  had  fallen  for  the  last  bid.  She 
was  just  in  "time  to  see  Will  springing  on  one  barebacked  steed, 
and  leading  his  beribboned  brother  by  a  cord.  And  despite  all 
her  anger  and  contempt,  she  could  not  avoid  a  thrill  of  admiration 
for  the  grace  of  his  poise  and  the  fearlessness  of  his  carriage. 
And  a  dull  aching  pain  began  at  her  heart.  She  felt  she  wanted 
something  ;  she  had  missed  getting  something — and  obscurely 
she  told  herself  it  was  the  horses  he  was  leading  away.  Yes,  as 
a  Carrier  she  was  a  failure. 


VII 

And  then  suddenly  the  jovial  figure  of  the  Showman  panted 
into  view.  His  face  was  unshorn,  unwashed  even,  although 
abundantly  irrigated  with  perspiration,  and  he  wore  a  low- 
crowned  vast-brimmed  hat  and  an  unseasonable  fur-lined  cloak 
reaching  almost  to  his  slippers  and  fastened  at  the  neck  by  a 
brass  buckle.  Although  Jinny  always  had  a  soft  place  in  her 
maternal  heart  for  Mr.  Flippance,  nobody  could  have  been  more 
unwelcome  at  this  moment  of  her  professional  humiliation.  But 
before  she  could  confess  her  failure,  Tony  Flip  gasped  out :  "  A 
horse  !     A  horse  !     My  kingdom  not  to  have  it  !  " 

"  How  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Am  I  too  late  ?     Have  you  bought  it  yet  ?  " 

"  Not  yet  !  "  said  Jinny. 

"  Thank  God !  "  He  grasped  effusively  at  her  hand,  but 
encountering  the  horn  first,  shook  that  instead,  without  appa- 
rently noticing  the  difference.  "  Just  as  I  woke  up,  it  popped 
into  my  nut  that  this  was  the  morning  of  the  cattle  fair.  Out 
of  bed  I  flew  like  from  that  bed  in  the  Crystal  Palace  that  chucks 
you  out  by  a  spring,  and  though  I  mayn't  have  beat  the  half-mile 
record,  I'm  beat  myself  1  Whew  !  Not  a  bad  gag,  that  1 " 
And  mopping  his  brow,  he  grinned  through  a  grimy  handkerchief. 

"  I  thought  you  looked  odd,"  said  Jinny,  equally  relieved. 

"  Yes,  I  know  my  collar's  a  rag.  But  better  sweat  than  debt, 
eh?" 

"  It's  not  your  collar — it's  seeing  you  out  of  your  dressing- 
gown  at  this  hour  !  " 

"  You're  a  quiz,  that's  what  you  are,"  laughed  Tony. 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  297 

"  Never  mind  !  That  cloak  comes  nigh  it,  and  you've  still 
got  your  carpet  slippers." 

"Have  I  ?  O  Lord!  I  thought  the  road  was  feeling  hard. 
Is  that  a  bar  I  see  before  me  ?  " 

"  It  is,"  said  Jinny  severely,  "  But  while  you're  still  sober, 
perhaps  you  will  tell  me  why  you've  changed  your  mind  about 
the  horse  ?  " 

"  Because  I've  done  with  marionettes.  I'm  going  back  to  the 
legitimate." 

Jinny  was  puzzled.  "  To  your  wife,  do  you  mean  ?  I  thought 
she  was  dead." 

Tony  roared  with  laughter.  "  You  little  country  mouse  ! 
And  yet  you're  right.  The  legitimate  is  the  missus  I  should 
never  have  left — the  drama  with  a  big  D.  I  don't  mean  the 
drama  with  swear  words — ha,  ha,  ha  !  but  the  real  live  article. 
You  see,  Duke  and  me,  we've  agreed  to  swop  back." 

"  What  for  ?  " 

"  What  for  ?  Why,  that's  just  the  trouble.  For  a  considera- 
tion, says  that  son  of  a  horse-leech.  And  I  say  that's  blood- 
sucking.    Good  idea  !     Why  shouldn't  you  be  arbitrator  ?  " 

The  word,  which  was  unfortunately  absent  from  the  Spelling- 
Book,  suggested  nothing  to  her  but  being  hanged,  drawn,  and 
quartered,  like  a  rebel  whom  Gran'fer  had  once  seen  executed. 
But  she  was  afraid  of  being  again  set  down  as  a  country  mouse, 
so  she  replied  cautiously  :    ''I  haven't  the  time  !  " 

"  Oh,  I'll  pay  you  your  time.  Yes,  you'd  be  the  ideal  arbi- 
trator," cried  Mr.  Flippance,  catching  fire  at  his  own  idea.  "  To 
begin  with,  you  know  nothing  about  it.  So  that's  settled,  and 
you  shall  drive  me  to  Duke's  caravan  this  very  morning." 

"  Not  if  I  have  to  wait  for  your  drink." 

"  The  way  you  drive  a  man  not  to  drink  is  awful,"  he  groaned. 
"  Never  mind.  I've  got  cool  again.  Talking  to  you  is  as  good 
as  a  drink.     Guardian  angel  !  "     He  squeezed  her  horn. 

"  You  see,"  he  narrated,  as  they  drove  townwards,  "  Duke 
turned  up  here  with  the  Flippance  Fit-Up  on  Saturday  night,  and 
struck  an  awful  frost." 

"  So  he  told  me,"  said  Jinny.  ''  I  met  him  yesterday  when  I 
came  out  of  chapel,  and  I  told  him  w^hat  a  roaring  trade  you 
were  doing." 

"  My  preserver  !  Then  it's  to  you  I  owe  it  he's  hankering  for 
his  own  show  back  again  1     Not  that  he  could  expect  to  do  any 


298  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

business  in  my  own  town,  or  indeed  any  other.  He  forgot  that 
while  I,  unseen,  can  be  Duke,  the  public  won't  look  at  him  for 
a  moment  as  Flippance.  He  takes  the  name  of  Flippance  in 
vain — the  public  knows  the  difference  between  a  barnstormer 
and  their  own  Tony.  To  say  nothing  of  that  mincing  little 
Duchess  after  my  full-throated,  full-bosomed  Polly.  Poor  dear 
Polly — pining  away  pulling  strings  !  " 

"  Why,  she  told  me,"  said  the  astonished  Jinny,  "  that  she 
wouldn't  go  back  on  the  stage  for  all  the  treasures  of  the  Crystal 
Palace." 

"  Ah,  that's  her  unselfishness — bless  her  1 — her  own  crystal 
soul.  She  knows  how  the  stage  tries  her  pa's  nerves.  But 
haven't  I  stood  by  her  side  as  we  jogged  the  figures  and  seen  her 
poor  phiz  working  at  the  thought  of  being  cut  off  from  her  public 
like  in  a  diving-bell  ?  She  takes  things  hard,  does  Polly,  not 
like  the  Duchess,  who's  got  no  more  temperament  than  a  tinned 
sardine.     You've  seen  her,  haven't  you  ?  " 

"  If  you  mean  Mrs.  Duke,  she  was  with  him  yesterday.  A 
pretty,  blue-eyed  woman,  with  golden  hair." 

"  Oh,  is  it  golden  this  season  ?  But  have  you  seen  her  act,  I 
mean  ?  " 

"  I've  never  seen  a  play  at  all !  " 

"  Tut,  tut,  tut  1     Then  you've  never  seen  Me  !  " 

"  Oh — you  seem  to  me  a  play  all  the  time,"  she  said  candidly. 

He  was  not  displeased.  "  Then  you  do  have  an  idea  what  a 
play  is  ?  " 

"  I've  seen  Punch  and  Judy — and  the  Christmas  mummers." 

He  laughed.  "  Well,  if  Polly  was  working  Punch  and  Judy 
from  behind,  there'd  be  more  life  and  go  in  her  than  there  is  to 
the  Duchess  when  she's  on  the  stage  playing  Juliet.  The  public 
won't  pay  to  see  a  china  doll.  But  my  Polly  !  I  tell  you  that 
standing  with  the  •  trings  in  her  hand,  with  nobody's  eye  on  her 
but  mine  and  her  Maker's,  and  in  a  space  where  there  isn't  room 
to  swing  a  cat,  I've  seen  that  girl  raging  and  shouting  and  tearing 
about  with  the  passion  of  the  scene  till  I've  had  to  wake  up  too, 
and  we've  gone  at  it  ding-dong,  hammer  and  tongs.  And  with 
three  figures  each  to  work,  and  voices  to  keep  changing,  it's  no 
mean  feat,  I  can  tell  you.  Duke  and  his  Duchess  now,  when 
they  worked  the  figures,  used  to  just  stand  like  stocks,  saying 
the  words,  no  expression  or  movement,  except  in  the  marionettes." 

"  But  if  the  public  sees  only  the  marionettes !  "  said  Jinny. 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  299 

Mr.  Flippance  shook  his  head.  "  There's  no  art  in  cold  blood. 
Not  that  marionette  art  hasn't  got  its  own  special  beauties,  and 
I  freely  admit  that  in  puppetry  proper  I'm  not  in  it  with  Duke, 
who  was  born  into  the  business,  and  who  cut  and  fitted  the 
figures  himiself.  Lazy  though  you  think  me,  how  I've  sweated 
to  get  those  things  right !  What  an  ungrateful  swine  the  public 
can  be  for  one's  pearls  !  " 

"  What  kind  of  pearls  ?  "  asked  Jinny. 

"  Why,  when  a  character  takes  up  a  glass  of  wine,  for  instance, 
and  drinks  it." 

"  Well,  I  shouldn't  applaud  that,"  laughed  Jinny. 

"  There  you  are  !  "  he  said  with  gloomy  triumph.  "  The 
public  can't  see  the  cleverness  of  it.  But  if  you  remember  the 
delicacy  it  takes  to  manipulate  the  figure  from  behind,  to  make 
it  clutch  the  glass  just  right,  instead  of  pawing  the  air,  to  make 
that  glass  come  accurately  to  the  mouth,  youll  see  the  countless 
chances  against  perfection.  Talk  of  the  corkscrew  equilibrist  at 
Astley's  !  Why,  Jinny,  w^hen  that  glass  sets  itself  down  again 
without  accident,  there  ought  to  be  applause  to  make  the  welkin 
ring.     But  not  a  hand,  not  a  hand  !  " 

"  Well,  but  it  can't  seem  very  wonderful  from  the  front,"  said 
Jinny. 

"  It  would  if  people  had  brains  to  think.  For  every  joint  in 
the  human  body  there's  a  joint  in  Duke's  marionette,  and  for 
every  joint  in  Duke's  marionette  there's  a  separate  string  to 
pull.  Every  art  has  its  own  ideal,  and  for  a  puppet  to  sit  down 
safely  is  a  greater  success  than  for  a  Kean  to  play  Shylock. 
Though,  of  course,  all  this  must  be  Greek  to  you." 

"  But  when  I'm  thinking  of  the  fun  of  Punch  and  Judy ^^"^  said 
Jinny  shrewdly,  "  I  can't  think  of  the  cleverness  of  the  showman 
pulling  the  strings — otherwise  I  should  forget  the  figures  weren't 
alive,  nor  the  story  real — the  two  things  contradict  one  another." 

"  By  Jove  !  I  think  you've  hit  it,"  said  Mr.  Flippance,  more 
gloomily  than  ever.  "  They  take  the  standard  of  drama — not 
of  mechanical  miracles.  And  that's  why  they  applaud  most  at 
the  easiest  effects,  just  shouting  and  blood  and  thunder,  and 
that's  why  I'm  sick,  I  mean,  why  Polly  is  sick  of  the  whole 
business.  Take  our  tight-rope  dancer  now.  I  don't  say  she's  as 
graceful  as  a  live  dancer  at  Richardson's,  or  pirouettes  like  the 
Cairo  Contortionist  of  my  young  days  at  Vauxhall.  But  she's 
far  more  w^onderful.     A  live  tight-rope  dancer  can,  after  all,  only 


300  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

fall  downwards  if  she  makes  a  slip.  But  ours,  instead  of  tumbling 
down,  might  fly  up  like  a  balloon,  or  even  just  miss  the  tight-rope 
and  dance  on  nothing  like  you  see  a  murderer  at  Newgate.  But 
the  public  take  the  standard  of  the  ballet  or  the  queens  of  the 
tight-rope,  and  instead  of  giving  us  a  hand  for  the  cleverness  in 
the  making  and  dressing  of  the  puppet,  and  another  hand  for 
the  putting  life  into  it,  and  a  third  hand  for  the  dexterity  of  the 
manipulation,  there's  times  when  we  get  no  more  recognition 
than  if  'twas  a  monkey-on-a-stick.  I  tried  to  educate  'em  by 
letting  'em  see  the  strings  or  the  wires — I  mustn't  tell  an  out- 
sider what  they  are  exactly — I  flooded  my  stage  with  light. 
Duke,  now,  used  to  keep  his  scene  particularly  dark  with  the 
fantoccini.''^ 

"  What's  fantokeeny  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  imitating  his  mispro- 
nunciation as  best  she  could. 

"  They're  the  figures  that  are  more  mechanism  than  character 
— balancers,  pole-carriers,  stilt-walkers,  spiral  ascensionists,  and 
this  tight-rope  dancer  I'm  telling  you  of.  Duke's  idea  was  to  keep 
the  mechanism  dark." 

*'  That  seems  to  me  best,"  said  Jinny. 

"  I  don't  agree,"  said  Mr.  Flippance.  "  There's  the  scenic 
effects  to  consider.     Darken  your  scene  and  you  hide  it." 

"  But  if  you  light  it,  you  show  up  the  way  it's  done,"  Jinny 
urged. 

"  Unless  you  show  'em  the  way  it's  done,  how  can  they  appre- 
ciate the  way  you  do  it  ?  But  there,  I'm  done  with  it !  Let 
Duke  have  his  pony.     Polly  shall  tread  the  boards  once  more." 

"  Does  he  want  you  to  give  him  a  pony  then  to  change  back  I  " 

"  That's  it,  the  son  of  a  Shylock." 

"  Then  you  will  want  a  horse  after  all  ?  " 

"  A  pony — you  little  innocent — means  twenty-five  pounds.  I 
suppose,  though,  that's  about  the  value  of  a  pony." 

"  It  depends  who's  bidding  against  you,"  said  Jinny  ruefully. 

"  Well,  anyhow,  that's  what  the  bloodsucker  wants — the 
twenty-five  pounds  he  gave  me  he  wants  back  again." 

"  But  if  he  gave  it  you,  why  isn't  it  fair  to  giv«  it  back  ?  " 

"  Ah  !  You're  beginning  to  arbitrate,  are  you  ?  Well,  then  1 
It  isn't  fair  because  I  get  back  the  Flippance  Fit-Up  tarnished 
and  depreciated  by  the  performances  of  that  howling  amateur 
and  his  squeaking  doll  of  a  Duchess.  Besides,  I  don't  want  the 
'  Fit-Up '   particularly,   only  my  trade-mark   back,   the  world- 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  301 

famous  word,  Flippance,  for  I  am  going  to  stay  the  whole  year 
here  in  Chipstone — you  see  what  lots  of  people  there  are  on 
market  days — Mother  Gander's  buying  a  bigger  hall  for  you 
Peculiars — haven't  you  heard  ? — and  me  and  Charley  have 
worked  it  with  her  to  sell  me  the  old  chapel.  I'll  easily  get  it 
m.ortgaged,  licensed,  knocked  into  shape,  and  enlarged — that 
piece  of  ground  between  the  gate  and  the  doors  is  wasted  at 
present,  and  there's  an  American  capitalist  keen  to  come  in — I 
met  him  just  now  riding  a  black  horse  and  leading  another — and 
what  better  omen  could  man  desire  ?  The  Flippance  Palace  I 
shall  call  my  theatre — suggests  the  Hyde  Park  success,  d'ye  see  ? 
And  when  that  Crystal  show  is  over — it  won't  run  beyond 
October — I'll  have  the  Queen's  elephant  standing  in  my  lobby  ! 
liOrd,  it'll  draw  all  Essex  !     Chipstone'll  become  the  capital !  " 

These  sudden  pieces  of  information  left  Jinny  gasping.  The 
old  chapel  thus  whisked  aWay  from  under  her  feet,  and  turned 
into  a  gigantic  Punch-and-Judy  show  sent  her  world  reeling ; 
while  Will,  transformed  into  a  theatre  proprietor,  seemed  rapt 
away  to  unimaginable  heights — or  depths.  But  she  did  not 
quite  believe  it  all, 

"  And  what  does  Miss  Flippance  say  ?  "  she  murmured. 

"  Polly  ?  She'll  be  off  her  nut  with  joy.  Why,  she's  such  a 
glutton  for  work,  is  that  girl,  that  when  we  played  The  Mistletoe 
Bough  she  used  to  play  Lady  Agnes  in  Act  I  and  her  spirit  in 
Act  II  (after  she's  killed  by  being  shut  up  in  the  box,  you 
know),  and  actually  double  the  part  with  that  of  her  maid,  Maud, 
who  has  two  quick  changes  from  jacket  and  petticoat  to  tunic 
and  trunks,  and  back  again  to  bodice  and  skirt,  not  to  mention 
slipping  to  and  fro  'twixt  spirit  and  flesh.  She's  pining  away  to 
a  spirit  herself,  poor  dear,  for  lack  of  her  real  work.  Only  we 
mustn't  break  it  to  her  before  the  deed  is  done — or  rather  signed. 
The  poor  girl  vv^ould  insist  on  sacrificing  herself.  But  after  aU 
I've  saved  thirty  pounds — you  realize  I  won't  need  a  horse  now — 
so  even  if  I  pay  him  twenty-five,  I  make  a  fiver.  Not  a  bad 
morning's  work,  eh,  my  dear  ?  We'll  get  a  good  stock  company 
and  give  'em  everything  from  the  Bard  to  burletta,  and  I've  got 
some  lovely  ideas  for  taking  plays  out  of  Mr.  Dickens's  novels. 
Oh,  we'll  wake  up  the  old  place.  Charley  knows  some  local  girls 
that  would  come  in  splendidly  for  ballets  and  choruses,  and 
there's  a  wonderful  scene-painter,  too,  down  here — a  chap  I 
knew  at  the  *  Eagle  '  in  London — he's  lost  his  job  and  come 


302  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

down  to  his  folks  to  get  cured — his  hand  shakes  a  bit  still,  but 
he's  a  marvel,  I  promise  you,  the  days  he's  not  sewn  up." 

Accepting  this  synonym  for  intoxication  as  referring  to  the 
medical  operations  upon  the  unfortunate  artist,  Jinny  received 
the  statement  with  an  admiring  commiseration. 

"  And  haven't  you  got  a  friend,  a  wonderful  expert  in  cos- 
tumes ?  "  Tony  rattled  on. 

"  Me  ?  "  she  murmured,  puzzled. 

*'  A  sort  of  bearded  lady  from  a  French  convent,  a  cranky  old 
Catholic  who  talks  with  angels,  but  is  a  dab  all  the  same  at  dress- 
making  !  "  • 

"  You  don't  mean  Miss  Gentry  ?  " 

"  That's  the  name.  We'll  appoint  her  wardrobe  mistress." 
Never  had  Jinny  known  him  so  happy  and  gaseous- -and,  para- 
doxically enough,  the  more  he  poured  out,  the  more  inflated 
he  got  1 

*'  Miss  Gentry'll  never  enter  a  theatre,"  said  Jinny  assuredly. 

"  We  shall  see.  W^ardrobe  Mistress  to  the  Flippance  Palace, 
Chipstone.  Think  how  that  will  improve  her  billheads  !  And 
there's  you,  too  !  W^hy  should  you  waste  a  first-class  stage 
presence  on  carrying  ?  You  carry  yourself  too  well  for  that, 
eh  ?  Ha,  ha,  ha  !  A  thinking  part,  perhaps,  to  begin  with,  but 
with  your  good  speaking  voice " 

Before  Jinny  had  encountered  the  full  shock  of  this  new  pro- 
position, Mr.  Flippance  broke  off  and  besought  her  frenziedly  to 
drive  down  a  side  street.  As  she  obeyed,  she  realized  that  they 
had  just  escaped  Polly— though  a  Polly  hardly  recognizable  in 
that  houri  in  white,  creamily  jacketed,  bonneted,  gloved,  and, 
above  all,  veiled,  whom  only  her  massive  tread  betrayed  as 
charmless. 

"  You  see,"  explained  Polly's  pa,  "  it  doesn't  do  to  argue  v\dth 
women  you're  fond  of  :  you've  just  got  to  do  what's  best  for  'em. 
Duke  now,  he's  very  weak  with  women  :  'twixt  you  and  I,  he 
only  got  my  Fit-Up  because  the  Duchess,  tired  of  working  in  the 
dark  and  of  blushing  unseen,  wanted  to  show  off  what  you  call 
her  blue  eyes  and  golden  hair.  She  tried  pulling  his  strings — 
see  ? — and  he,  having  no  backbone,  jigged  about  at  her  pleasure. 
But  now,  to  my  thinking.  Duke's  found  out  what  a  fool  she's 
made  of  him  and  of  herself,  too.  For,  of  course,  she's  mucked 
up  his  business.  Polly  mayn't  be  a  Venus,  but  she's  stunning  in 
her  make-ups — I  assure  you  such  a  great  artist  is  that  woman, 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  303 

that  seeing  her  standing  in  the  wings  at  the  first  dress  rehearsal, 
I've  more  than  once  fallen  in  love  with  her  myself — till,  of 
course,  she  opened  her  mouth.  Yes,  Polly  can  always  have  blue 
eyes  and  golden  hair,  but  the  Duchess  will  never  have  talent  if 
she  rehearses  till  doomsday." 

"  Then  is  Mr.  Duke  satisfied  to  go  back  to  the  illegitimate  ?  " 
asked  Jinny. 

He  laughed  at  the  word.  "  To  the  marionettes  ?  That's 
what  Duke  wants  the  twenty-five  pounds  for,"  he  answered. 
"  He's  lost  heavily,  and  he'll  be  able  to  shov/  her  a  quid  pro  quo — 
or  rather  twenty-five  of  'em — ha,  ha,  ha  1  Ml  the  same,  we'd 
better  not  talk  business  if  the  Duchess  happens  to  be  at  home. 
She  may  have  her  hand  too  tight  on  his  strings." 

"  But  what  shall  we  do  if  she's  in  ?  " 

"  I  shall  only  say  I've  looked  in  to  congratulate  her  on  her 


successes  !  " 


"  Oh  !  "  Jinny  was  seriously  shocked,  and  Mr.  Flippance, 
realizing  that  her  conscience  was  as  "  country  "  as  her  vocabulary, 
had  the  shrewdness  to  say  he  was  only  joking.  "  Besides,"  he 
added,  "  she's  sure  not  to  be  at  home  in  the  morning." 

"  Why  not  ?  " 

"  Because  she  won't  have  her  hair  on." 

"  But  how  could  she  go  out  then  wdthout  it  ?  " 

Tony  made  as  if  to  pinch  her  cheek,  as  if  nothing  else  could 
adequately  express  his  acute  sense  of  her  simplicity,  but  she 
guarded  deftly  with  the  horn ;  rapping  him,  indeed,  on  the 
knuckles  with  it. 

*'  Why,  Jinny,  you  hurt  me,"  he  said  ruefully. 

"  Well,  remember  I'm  not  a  marionette." 

"  You're  certainly  not  a  woman  of  the  world.  The  Duchess 
wouldn't  let  us  in,  I  mean,  but  that's  just  w^hat  we  want,  provided 
we  can  get  Duke  to  exit." 

In  another  minute  or  two  she  drove  him  up  to  the  back  of 
"  The  Learned  Pig,"  and  alighting,  they  picked  their  way 
through  the  undulating  and  muddy  enclosure,  grass-grown,  and 
strewn  with  logs,  where  the  caravan  was  stationed.  There  was 
really  a  pig  there  (duly  styed  in  his  very  dirty  academy),  besides 
pecking  poultry  and  pathetic  rabbit-hutches  agleam  with  eager 
sniffing  noses,  and  a  flutter  of  washing,  and  two  shabby  traps, 
holding  up  their  shafts  like  beggars'  arms.  But  the  caravan 
itself  illumined  the  untidy  space  with  its  gay  green  paint,  its 


304  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

high  yellow  wheels,  its  spick-and-span  air,  culminating  in  the 
lace  curtain  of  its  tiny  arched  window.  Mr.  Flippance  dragged 
his  slippers  up  the  step-ladder,  and  Jinny,  having  by  this  time 
gathered  what  an  arbitrator  was,  followed  in  his  wake,  prepared 
to  undertake  this  or  any  other  job. 

But  the  Duchess  did  let  them  in — more,  she  opened  the  door 
herself,  looking  indeed  too  lovely  for  anything  but  a  doll,  and 
suggesting  by  her  rising  and  falling  eyelids,  her  smiling  lips,  and 
her  mobile  hands  that  she  w^as  equipped  with,  all  the  most 
expensive  devices. 

Duke,  habited  in  an  old-fashioned  blue  coat  with  brass  buttons, 
was  discovered  poring  at  a  desk  over  a  long,  narrow  account 
book  :  he  was  an  elderly  and  melancholy  young  man,  with 
bristly  black-and-white  hair  and  small  pig-eyes  set  close  together. 
The  stamp  of  aspiration  and  defeat  was  set  pathetically  upon  the 
sallow  face  he  turned  over  his  shoulder  to  his  visitors. 

Jinny  was  not  edified  by  Mr.  Flippance' s  pretence  that  she — 
Jinny — was  the  sole  ground  for  the  visit.  She  had,  he  said, 
been  driving  him  home  from  the  market,  where  he  had  gone  to 
dispose  of  a  horse,  and  he  had  taken  the  liberty  of  bringing  her 
to  see  their  "wonderful"  caravan,  finding,  to  his  amazem,ent, 
that  she  had  never  been  inside.  For  once  the  stock  Essex 
epithet  was  justified — it  was  indeed  a  "  w^onderful  "  caravan, 
and  the  interior  so  took  up  her  attention  that  for  some  time  she 
failed  to  foUov/  the  conversation,  though  she  had  a  dim  uneasy 
sense  that  it  continued — as  it  began— with  scant  regard  to  the 
ethics  of  the  Spelling-Book.  The  gay  paint  and  the  neat  lace 
curtains  had  prepared  her  for  an  elegance,  and  even  an  airiness, 
that  were  not  to  be  found  vv^ithin  the  caravan.  But  little  else 
seemed  lacking.  For  into  this  cramped  wheeled  chamber, 
looking  scarce  larger  than  her  own  cart,  and  certainly  not  so 
large  as  Commander  Dap's  cabin  in  the  Watch  Vessel,  was 
packed  not  only  a  complete  cottage  with  its  parlour,  living-room, 
bedroom,  scullery,  and  kitchen,  but  the  mantelpieces  and  chests 
of  drawers  were  as  crowded  with  china  dogs  and  shepherdesses 
as  Blackwater  Hall  itself,  besides  a  wealth  of  pictures,  objects 
of  art,  posters,  and  inhabited  birdcages,  to  which  Daniel  Quarles's 
domain  could  lay  no  claim.  Not  that  there  was  really  more 
than  one  undivided  space,  or  that  you  could  tell  where  one  room 
ended  and  the  other  began.  Nevertheless,  all  the  different 
sections  were  clearly  visible,  though  a  square  yard  here  or  there 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  305 

did  double  or  treble  service,  forming  part  of  this  or  that  room 
according  as  you  looked  at  it.  Most  clearly  marked,  of  course, 
was  the  bedroom,  consisting  of  a  raised,  neatly  counterpaned  bed, 
like  an  upper  berth,  in  a  ship,  and  a  chest  of  drawers  topped  with 
ornaments,  though  the  kitchen  with  its  grate  and  oven  and 
flap-table  ran  it  close,  in  every  sense  of  the  phrase.  Amid  these 
poky  surroundings,  the  Duchess's  blue  eyes  and  golden  hair 
shone  so  sunnily  and  veraciously — taken  unawares  as  she  seemed 
— that  Jinny,  ignorant  she  was  expecting  a  visitor,  felt  that  Mr. 
Flippance  was  as  unjust  of  judgment  as  he  was  loose  of  statement. 

But  an  interior  so  foreign  to  her  experience  affected  her  with 
all  the  pleasurable  interest  of  drama,  apart  from  the  comedy  of 
which  she  felt  it  to  be  the  setting,  as,  awaking  again  to  the 
conversation,  she  heard  the  tw^o  males  still  keeping  it  carefully 
away  from  the  negotiation  pending  between  them,  and  evidently 
hard  exercised — despite  gin  from  an  improbable  corner  cupboard 
— to  keep  the  ball  of  nothingness  rolling.  Painful  silences  fell, 
which  a  linnet  and  a  goldfinch  mule  strove  loyally  to  fill,  but 
w^hich  remained  so  awkward  that  she  herself  w^as  constrained  to 
enter  into  the  conspiracy,  though  only  by  way  of  genuine  admira- 
tion. Admiration  of  the  caravan — a  ready-made  thing  that  went 
with.  Duke — was  by  no  means,  however,  the  admiration  the 
Duchess  wanted,  and  as  she  failed  to  extract  it  from  poor  Mr. 
.Flippance,  fidgeting  under  Jinny's  Puritan  eye,  she  fell  back  on 
a  tribute  of  her  own  to  herself,  recounting  tediously  the  triumphs  of 
her  tour,  and  calling  on  her  partner  for  corroboration,  which  he 
supplied  in  joyless  monosyllables. 

All  Flippance's  interjections  with  a  view  to  stem  the  stream 
and  divert  the  conversation  to  a  pretext  for  Duke's  exit  with 
him  were  like  straws  tossed  before  a  torrent.  But  presently 
there  came  relief — though  the  plot  thickened.  Jinny  felt.  There 
was  a  sound  of  footsteps  on  the  ladder,  and,  "Ah,  there's  Polly  !  " 
the  monologist  broke  off. 

If  Jinny  was  already  steeped  in  a  sense  of  the  dramatic,  if, 
stimulated  by  the  novel  setting,  she  had  begun  to  feel  that  in 
such  cross-currents  and  mutual  deceptions  must  lie  the  substance 
of  that  unknown  article  of  commerce  these  people  lived  by — a 
play — how  strongly  was  this  intuition  confirmed  and  this  sense 
enhanced  v/hen  Mr.  Flippance,  whispering  in  apparent  facetious- 
ness,  "  I'm  in  my  slippers — she'll  rag  me,"  kicked  them  off  under 
a  chair,  slid  back  m.ahogany  panels   below  the  bed,  disclosing 

u 


3o6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

a  lower  berth,  and  tumbled  in,  with  his  finger  roguishly  on  his 
lips,  closing  the  panels  from  within ! 

"  l^he  Mistletoe  Bough  !  "  he  sibilated.  So  there  it  was  !  They 
were  actually  imitating  a  play  before  her  very  eyes.  Duke  and 
the  Duchess,  grinning,  drew  the  panels  tighter.  The  theatre  was 
so  in  their  blood.  Jinny  felt,  that  these  things  came  as  natural 
to  them  as  carrying  to  her. 

It  was  thus  that  Jinny  saw  her  first  farce — unless  the  high 
tragedy  of  Punch  and  Judy  be  degraded  by  that  name. 


VIII 

Polly,  it  soon  transpired,  was  come  to  the  midday  dinner  with 
her  friend,  and  the  dinner  itself  was  coming  in  presently  from 
"  The  Learned  Pig."  The  real  purpose  of  the  invitation  was,  it 
transpired  equally,  that  Polly  might  explain  to  the  Duchess  the 
reading  of  a  part  alleged  to  be  confused  in  the  manuscript 
acquired  with  the  Flippance  Fit-Up  :  she  was  obviously  fishing 
for  tips.  While  these  things  were  transpiring,  poor  Flippance  in 
his  fur  was  perspiring.  Gradually  Jinny  saw  a  rift  appearing  in  the 
bed-panels  and  widening  to  a  cautious  chasm  of  a  few  inches.  It 
made  her  feel  choky  herself,  especially  as  the  caravan's  little 
window  was  closed.  She  signed  apprehensively  to  Mr.  Duke, 
who,  however,  was  already  revolving  feverishly  how  to  clear  the 
stage  for  himself  and  his  fellow-negotiator.  And  presently  he 
broke  into  the  feminine  dialogue  with,  "  I'm  sure,  dearest,  Polly 
w^ouldn't  mind  acting  that  bit  for  you.  But  there  ain't  room  for 
Polly's  genius  here — she'd  be  breaking  up  the  happy  home  ! 
Hadn't  you  better  go  into  the  inn-parlour,  Bianca  ?  There'll  be 
nobody  there  yet." 

The  Duchess  might  have  lacked  talent,  but  she  had  not  played 
in  farces  without  learning  how  to  behave  in  them  :  so  without 
even  needing  a  wink  from  her  spouse,  she  made  a  kindly  exit 
behind  Polly,  not,  however,  without  turning  back  a  grinning 
doll's  head  at  Mr.  Flippance's  beaded  countenance  emerging 
gaspingly  from  his  berth.  But  Jinny,  who  had  already  witnessed 
comedy  and  farce,  was  now  more  conscious  of  the  tragedy  of  the 
situation  than  of  its  humours,  as  she  saw  the  Duchess  tripping 
down  the  ladder,  with  silken  stockings  revealed  by  the  raised 
skirt.  It  seemed  to  Jinny  that  the  poor  lady  was  tripping  thus 
blithely  to  her  dark  doom,  behind  the  scenes  of  the  puppet  show  ; 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  307 

that  her  blue  eyes  and  golden  hair  had  flaunted  their  last  upon 
the  stage.  And  the  irony  of  her  grinning  exit  was  accented  by 
the  manuscript  in  her  hand  :  she  was  going  off  to  study  a  part 
she  would  nevermore  play.  It  all  gave  Jinny  a  sense  of  the 
Duchess  being  herself  a  puppet,  with  an  ironic  fate  pulling  the 
strings,  and  she  was  frightened  by  a  thought  hitherto  beyond 
the  reach  of  her  soul ;  by  a  dim  feeling  that  perhaps  she  too— - 
and  everybody  else — was  similarly  mocked.  Who  was  per- 
petually jerking  her  towards  that  young  man,  and  then  jerking 
her  back  ?  What  force  was  always  putting  into  her  mouth 
words  of  fleer  and  flout,  and  pulling  away  the  hand  she  yearned 
to  lay  in  his  ? 

"  Whew  !  "  exclaimed  Mr.  Anthony  Flippance,  as  Jinny  shut 
the  door  safely  on  the  Duchess — for  that  lady  never  shut  doors, 
partly  because  the  process  interfered  v/ith  the  sweep  of  one's 
exit,  Dartlv  because  what  concerned  a  scene  from  which  she  was 
absent  never  entered;  her  golden  head. 

"  Whew  !  "  repeated  Mr.  Flippance,  scrambling  out.  "  I  know 
now  what  Lady  Agnes  felt  like.  '  Help,  Lovel  I — Father,  help  ! 
— I  faint — /  die — Oh  I  Oh  I '  But  I'm  disappointed  in  Polly," 
he  added,  diving  under  a  chair.  "  Fancy  being  all  her  life  on 
the  stage,  and  not  espying  these  slippers  !  "  He  dug  his  feet 
into  them. 

"  There's  no  time  for  joking,"  said  Duke  anxiously,  as  he 
tugged  open  the  drawer  of  a  desk  in  his  "  parlour."  "  I  suppose 
Jinny  is  in  the  know  ?  " 

"  Jinny's  come  as  arbitrator  !  " 

"  What  1  "     Duke  wheeled  round,  his  hair  still  more  on  end. 

"  Get  on  with  your  mystery-desk.  It  stands  to  reason  a 
runaway  financial  imagination  like  yours  needs  a  brake." 

"Ain't  you  brake  enough  ?  "     Mr.  Duke's  tone  was  bitter. 

"  And  you  want  me  to  be  broke  !  "  retorted  Tony.  "  I  give 
you  my  beautiful  marionettes,  life-si?:ed  and  life-painted,  all 
carved  by  the  best  m_aker " 

"  Oh,  I  know  all  about  that !  "  interrupted  Duke  impatiently. 

"  Well,  you're  not  going  to  deny  your  own  skill,  I  hope  r  " 

Duke  glared  impotently  with  his  little  pig-eyes. 

"  And  with  the  costliest  costumes,"  Tony  went  on  blandly. 
"  And  all  these  puppets  moreover  with  the  latest  mechanical 
contrivances,  regardless  of  expense " 

"  And  don't  I  give  you  the  finest  goodwill  in  East  Anglia," 


3o8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

burst  in  Mr.  Duke,  "  the  Flippance  Fit-Up  with  all  its  plays, 
prestige,  and  unique  takings  ?  " 

"  One  thing  at  a  time,  old  cock.  Packed  into  a  box  that  itself 
opens  out  and  forms  part  of  the  stage,  com.bining  portability  of 
props  with " 

"  Do  dry  up  !  "  cried  the  maddened  Duke.  "  If  you're  not 
quick,  Bianca  will  be  back." 

"  What's  that  to  me  .?  To  cut  it  short,  I  give  you  the  finest 
marionette  show  in  the  world,  with  scenery,  sky-borders,  and 
plays  complete,  and  an  old-established  reputation,  a  show  that 
has  played  before  the  crowned  heads  of  Europe,  America,  and 
Australia,  and,  like  the  workhouse  boy  in  Mr.  Dickens's  book, 
you  ask  for  more.  What  say  yoti^  Jinny  ?  Thinkest  thou  the 
Duke  should  have  more  ?'" 

"  We  all  want  more,"  said  Jinny.  "  Air  !  Mayn't  I  open  the 
window  ?  " 

"  Oh,  excuse  me."     Mr.  Duke,  evidently  trained  by  his  big 
oil,  rushed  to  do  it.     "  But  haven't  I  lost  enough  without  losing 
my  twenty -five  pounds  too  ?  " 

He  turned  back  to  his  desk,  and  extricating  from  its  remoter 
recesses  another  large  narrow  fat  account  book — the  twin  of  that 
he  had  been  poring  over — held  it  up  theatrically.  "  Here's  my 
marionette  accounts  for  sixteen  years — look  through  'em  and  see 
if  you  can  find  any  single  week — ay,  even  the  week  of  King 
William's  funeral— as  low  as  the  best  of  the  weeks  since  I  touched 
your  wretched  show." 

"  My  wretched  show  !  "  Mr.  Flippance  lost  his  blandness. 
"  Why,  if  that's  the  case,  it's  you  that  have  depreciated  it.  Tou 
ought  to  pay  me  compensation." 

But  Duke  had  dramatically  dumped  the  book  down  side  by 
side  with  its  twin.  "  Look  on  this  picture  and  on  that  !  "  he 
said.  ^'  Duke's  Marionettes,  w^eek  ending  March  loth,  1849, 
Colchester.  Total,  fjzi  i8s.  lod.  Flippance  Fit-Up,  Colchester 
Corn  Exchange,  week  ending  March  8th,  185 1.  Monday. 
Eleven  shillings,     there's  an  opening  !     Tuesday- -" 

"  Oh,  come  to  the  d d  total !  "  said  Tony  impatiently. 

"  There  ain't  any  total,"  said  Duke  crushingly.  "  Tuesday, 
sixteen  shillings  and  sixpence." 

"  Always  rising,  you  see  !  "  said  Tony. 

"  Wednesday,"  Duke  went  on  implacably,  "  nine  shillings  ahd 
fourpence " 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  309 

"  Why,  how  do  you  get  fourpence  ?  "  interrupted  Tony 
severely.     *'  You  haven't  been  lettmg  down  the  prices,  I  hope." 

''  That's  noted  at  the  side.  See  !  "  said  the  careful  Duke.  "  A 
swindler  passed  off  a  groat  as  a  tanner.  Thursday-  Eight  and 
sixpence — imagine  the  Colchester  Corn  Exchange  with  eight  and 
sixpence  !     Friday.     Nine  shillings " 

"  Rising  again,  you  see,"  chirruped  Tony. 

"  Saturday.     One  pound  thirteen  and  six." 

"  There  you  are  !     That  pulls  you  up." 

"  Saturday  evening,"  concluded  Duke.     "  Two  pounds  eight." 

*'  And.  then  he  grumbles  !  "  Mr.  Flippance  raised  his  great 
ringed  hands  towards  Jinny. 

"  Total,  sin  pounds  five  and  tenpence  !  " 

"  And  isn't  that  enough  to  live  on  ?  "  cried  Tony.  "  Only  two 
in  family  and  a  little  bird  or  so  !  And  if  your  box-office  man  had 
been  smart  enough  to  tell  a  groat  from  a  tester,  you'd  have  had 
six  guineas  !  " 

"  He  wasn't  such  a  fool,"  said  Duke  dryly,  "  for  on  another 
night  it's  noted  that  a  half-sovereign  was  passed  off  on  him  for 
sixpence." 

"  And  then  you  outrage  Providence  by  complaining  of  the 
takings,"  said  Tony. 

"  Rent  of  Corn  Exchange,"  continued  Duke  doggedly,  "  three 
guineas.  Salaries  (to  company,  including  check-taker),  four 
pounds  eight.  Lighting,  a  pound.  Advertising  (including  bill- 
poster), three  pounds  ten " 

"  But,  my  dear  chap,  what  extravagance  !     No  wonder " 

"  Travelling  expenses  (company  and  scenery,  excluding  cara- 
van), eighteen  and  ninepence.  Drinks  to  Pressmen — one  and 
sixpence " 

"  Oh,  not  enough  !     No  wonder !  " 

"  Net  deficit,  seven  pounds  sixteen  and  threepence,  plus  the 
salary  of  Bianca  and  me  !  " 

"  What  !  Whv,  you  said  salary  of  company,  four  pounds 
eight  !  "  * 

"  You  don't  suppose  I  included  ourselves  with  the  check- 
taker  I  " 

"  You  didn't  ?  Oh,  my  dear  fellow,"  said  Tony  sSympatheti- 
cally,  "  no  wonder  you're  down  in  the  mouth.  A  wise  manager 
always  pays  his  salary  before  any  other  expense  ;  then  he's  always 
sure  of  a  stand-bv  !  " 


310  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  It  isn't  the  money  that's  the  worst,"  Duke  explained.  "  It's 
the  dreadful  loneliness." 

"  Why  didn't  you  stuff  the  house  with  paper  and  put  up  '  Free 
List  Absolutely  Suspended  '  ?  " 

"  Easier  said  than  done  in  a  place  where  you  don't  know  a 
soul.  Why,  Bianca  had  a  Benefit  Night,  and  how  many  do  you 
think  were  in  the  stalls  ?     Two  women  and  a  boy." 

"  I've  known  only  the  theatre  cat "  began  Tony  cheerfully. 

'"'  And  the  boy  w^ent  to  sleep  !  " 

"  Wasn't  it  his  bedtime  I  But  I  will  say  it's  not  entirely  the 
fault  of  your  acting.  I've  noticed  ever  since  that  Crystal  Palace 
loomed  on  the  horizon,  it's  unsettled  the  public  within  at  least 
fifty  miles  from  Hyde  Park.  I  was  talking  to  a  showman  who 
told  me  that  in  March  and  April  this  year  business  fell  off  every- 
where— there  was  no  interest  in  giants,  dwarfs,  fat  men,  pig-faced 
ladies,  and  even  jugglers,  animal  magnetizers,  lion-tamers,  per- 
forming elephants,  ventriloquists,  prestidigitators,  and  professors 
of  necromancy.  Didn't  you  hear  of  the  fate  of  poor  Wishbone,  the 
conjurer,  at  Chelmsford  Fair  ?  Not  even  a  kid  dropped  into  his 
booth,  so  he  v/ent  out  to  perform  outside,  but  before  he  could 
'  hey,  presto ! '  the  purse  back  to  the  owner,  the  peeler  copped 
him.  The  magistrate  wouldn't  listen  to  his  patter,  and  he  can't 
tap  himself  out  of  quod  either,  poor  chap.  Besides,  we  all 
remember  the  awful  weather  in  March,  yes  and  up  to  the  very 
opening  of  the  Crystal  Palace — rain,  rain,  rain." 

"  Well,  take  the  March  of  1849,"  ^^^^  Duke,  turning  back  his 
oblong  pages,  "  and  don't  forget  people'U  sit  in  Assembly  Rooms 
or  a  Corn  Exchange  when  they  won't  risk  a  draughty  tent.  Now 
look  at  the  weather  that  year — when  I  pulled  my  ov/n  strings. 
Tuesday,  W.S. — that  is,  wet,  snow.  Wednesday,  R.N.  (rough 
night).  Thursday,  S.H.T.  (storm,  hail,  and  thunder).  Saturday, 
W.T.  (wind,  tilt  OFF  !).  Come  now,  you  could  hardly  have  a 
worse  week,  cculd  you  ?  Everything  except  B.F.i  or  B;F.2 
(black  fog  or  big  funeral).  Yet  see,  my  takings  for  that  week 
were " 

Tony  flipped  away  the  book  with  his  jewelled  hand.  "  What 
you've  got  to  compare  with  your  Colchester  week,"  he  said,  "  is 
not  your  marionette  week  in  March  '49,  but  my  Fit-Up  vveek  for 
that  date." 

"  I  don't  see  that." 

"  It  stands  to  reason." 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  311 

They  debated  the  point  warmly  :  finally  Tony  referred  it  to 
Jinny  :    that  was  what  she  was  there  for,  he  recalled. 

"  I  certainly  think,"  arbitrated  the  little  Carrier,  "  that  we 
ought  to  see  what  Mr.  Flippance's  live  theatre  could  do  in  the 
same  weather." 

"  Oh,  very  well,"  acquiesced  Duke  sulkily.  "  And  what  did 
you  do  that  week  ?  " 

"  Heavens,  man,  how  on  earth  can  I  remember  ?  " 

"  But  haven't  you  got  it  wTitten  down  r  " 

"  What  do  you  take  me  for  ?  "  asked  Tony.  "  A  tradesman  ? 
A  bookkeeper  ?     Unless  Polly " 

"  You  told  me  the  other  Christmas  that  you  averaged  twenty- 
five,"  said  Duke  bitterly,  "  and  I  paid  you  one  week's  takings 
by  way  of  douceur." 

"  Well,  then  you  do  know  my  weekly  takings,"  said  Tony 
loftily. 

"  I  can't  stay  here  for  ever,"  put  in  Jinny.  "  I've  got  my 
work." 

"  I'm  paying  you,  ain't  I  ?  "  Tony  rebuked  her. 

"  But  not  giving  me  work."  She  assumed  a  judicial  air.  "  Do 
you,  Mr.  Flippance,  maintain  that  your  theatre  is  a  more  valuable 
concern  than  Mr.  Duke's  marionettes  ?  " 

"  Of  course  I  do." 

"  Then,"  said  the  young  Solomon  in  petticoats,  "  surely  if  you 
get  it  back,  you  ought  to  pay  him  the  difi^erence  in  value." 

"  Bravo  !  Bravo ! "  Mr.  Duke's  little  pig-eyes  gleamed, 
"  A  sensible  girl !  " 

"  Oh,  Jinny  !  "  groaned  Mr.  Flippance.  "  To  desert  your  old 
pal!" 

"  And  do  you,  Mr.  Duke,"  went  on  Jinny  imperturbably, 
"  m:aintain  that  your  marionettes  are  a  better  property  than  the 
Flippance  Fit-Up  ?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  said  Mr.  Duke,  not  to  be  caught. 

"  The  marionettes  are  a  worse  property  then  ?  "  she  asked. 

Duke  banged  his  book.     "  Much  worse." 

"  Then  why  do  you  want  it  back  ?  " 

Tony  uttered  a  shriek  of  delight.  "  A  Daniel  come  to  judg- 
ment !     Oh,  Jinny,  I  could  hug  you  !  " 

A  sweep  of  her  horn  kept  him  at  arm's  length.  "  You  say,  Mr. 
Duke,  that  the  Fit-Up  property  is  the  better,  and  yet  you  want 
to  give  it  up  ?  " 


312  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Mr.  Duke  leaned  bis  elbows  on  the  desk,  and  dropped  his  head  • 
in  his  hands.     "  You  confuse  me — I  must  have  time  to  think."    '! 

"  Hamlet  !  "  observed  Tony  pleasantly.  "  But  I  don't  think  ! 
the  ghost  will  walk."  His  hand  moved  towards  the  gin  decanter,  ] 
but  again  that  baffling  horn  intervened.  | 

"  Look  here  !  "  said  Duke,  rummaging  in  his  drawer.  "  I've  .• 
got  the  transfer  written  out,  ready  for  signature,  two  copies — the  ^ 
exact  words  of  our  last  agreement,  only  turned  the  other  way,  of  j 
course.     I'm  a  plain  man — is  it  to  be  or  not  to  be  ?  "  i 

"  That  is  the  question,"  said  Tony  sepulchrally.  "  But  you  j 
see  it  isn't  so  plain  as  you.  You've  depreciated  my  theatre  and] 
it's  not  v/orth  the  extra  pony.  Why  can't  you  make  a  reasonable  { 
compromise  and  just  swap  back  ?  "  | 

"  What  !     And  be  a  pony  out  of  pocket  ?  "  t 

"  You'll  be  an  elephant  out  of  pocket  if  you  don't,"  Jinny  ^ 
reminded  him.  "  Seven  pounds  sixteen  and  threepence  a  week  ] 
mount  up."  t 

"  Ah,  that  was  a  particularly  bad  week."  ,} 

"  Then  there  were  good  weeks  ? "  flashed  Tony.  ] 

"  I  tell  you  the  best  weren't  as  good  as  the  marionettes'  worst."  ] 

"  Come,  come,  old  cock,  draw  it  mild  !  "  '. 

*'  If  you  don't  believe  me,"  said  Duke,  firing  up,  "  look  for  • 
yourself  !  And  what's  more,  if  you  find  I'm  wrong,  keep  the  ] 
pony  and  be  hanged  to  you  !  "  j 

"  Easy  !  Easy  !  But  I  was  never  a  man  to  refuse  a  sporting  | 
offer — tip  us  the  tomes  !  "  \ 

Duke  handed  him  the  twin  account  books,  but  soon,  tiring  of  \ 
the  rows  of  figures,  Mr.  Flippance  begged  Jinny  to  pursue  the  \ 
investigation  while  he  studied  the  document  of  transfer.  j 

It  was  not  withou.t  a  thrill  that,  setting  the  volumes  on  a  ; 
hanging  flap  that  Duke  had  changed  for  her  into  a  table,  she  went  ] 
back  over  the  pages  of  faded  ink  that  told  of  toils  and  tribulations^ 
in  the  years  before  she  had  come  into  being  :  as  a  carrier  she  ] 
was  peculiarly  sensitive  to  these  records  of  wrecked  tents  and] 
ruined  takings.  Through  the  peace  of  the  summer  morning  in  \ 
that  poky  caravan,  the  winds  from  that  pre-natal  period  seemed  ; 
to  be  rushing,  its  snows  falling,  its  hails  and  thunders  crashing,  \ 
and  with  these  imagined  tempests  came  up  the  thought  of  Will.  , 
What  was  he  doing  now,  with  his  beautiful  black  horses  ?  Was  ] 
he  looking  for  Mr.  Flippance  at  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  ?  But  the  J 
thought  of  him  was  too  agitating ;   she  crushed  it  down  and  got  | 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  313  ] 

absorbed  in  her  task  and  the  tales  the  figures  told  :  the  blanks  i 
carefully  explained  by  Good  Friday  or  royal  mourning  or  the  i 
journey  to  some  distant  pitch  ;  the  varying  cost  of  these  pitches  ] 
in  publicans'  meadows  ;  the  varying  expense  of  cartage  ;  the  ] 
sudden  jumps  in  the  takings,  due — as  annotated — to  high  days  \ 
and  holidays,  or  to  royal  weddings,  or  to  favourite  pieces.  She  ] 
wondered  why  Mr.  Duke  ever  played  any  others.  "  What  is  \ 
D.F.N.  ?  "  she  asked  suddenly.  j 

"  Dismissed.  Fine  night,"  said  Mr.  Duke  in  melancholy  : 
accents.  It  was  the  supreme  tragedy.  "  Although  a.  fine  night,"  j 
he  explained,  rubbing  it  in  to  himself,  "  not  enough  to  be  worth  \ 
playing  to."  i 

"  You  didn't  always  do  good  business,  you  see,"  gurgled  Tony  ^ 
from  the  gin-glass  he  had  imperceptibly  acquired.  \ 

"  Accidents  will  happen,"  Duke  retorted. 

*'  And  v/hat  is  D.S.  ?  "  put  in  Jinny.     "  Dismissed.     Snow  ?  "  i 

"  D.S.  is  diddling  show,"  explained  Duke  gloomily.  "  I  struck  \ 
one  only  last  week  at  the  very  public-house  I  hired  my  pitch  \ 
from."  '  *  ^ 

"  That  wasn't  playing  fair,"  said  Tony.  ] 

*'  No,  indeed.  They  stuck  a  placard  in  the  window,  '  Great  l 
Water  Otter.  Free.'  And  when  you'd  had  your  drink  they  ] 
took  you  to  the  stables  to  see  it  in  its  tub.  There  were  cfowds  \ 
every  night.     It  was  put  in  the  paper."  \ 

Tony  grinned.     "  '  Lord,  what  fools  these  mortals  be  ! '  "  ] 

*'  But  why  ?  "  asked  Jinny.  "  I'd  rather  see  a  water-otter  j 
than  a  dancing  doll."  \ 

"  You're  not  even  a  country  mouse,"  said  Tony.  "  When  the  \ 
fools  push  and  squeeze  to  get  near  the  tub,  they  warn  'em,  '  Don't  j 
go  too  near  !  '  And  all  the  while  it's  only  a  big  iron  kettle — a  \ 
water-'otter.     See  !  "  \ 

Jinny  laughed.  \ 

"  Yes,  that's  what  they  all  do,"  said  Duke  dism^ally.  "  Laugh  \ 
and  help  to  gull  the  others.  And  betw^een  them  the  legitimate  ] 
goes  to  the  dogs."  • 

"  Or  the  otters."  Jinny  bent  in  lighter  spirits  over  the  twin  ] 
volumes.  "  I'm  afraid  you've  lost,  Mr.  Flippance,"  she  j 
announced  at  last.  "  I  can't  see  any  drama  week  of  Mr.  Duke's  1 
that  goes  as  high  as  the  worst  of  his  marionette  weeks."  \ 

"  Right  you  are  ! "  said  Tony,  cheerful  under  his  liquid.  \ 
"Sport  is  sport  and  the  pony  is  yours.     Here  goes!"     And  ^ 


314  JINNY  THE  CARRIER  ] 

picking  up  a  pen  from  the  desk,  he  signed  one  of  the  docu-  \ 
ments  with  a  long  thick  line  sweeping  backward  from  his  j 
final  "  e."  Duke  signed  the  other  copy  more  soberly,  and  i 
Jinny  witnessed  both  signatures  with  careful  calligraphy.  "  It  ■ 
only  remains,  old  cock,"  said  Tony,  "  to  deliver  the  twenty-five  i 
pounds."  i 

"  Hear,  hear,"  agreed  Duke.  l 

"  You  don't  suppose  I  carry  it  about  with  me  ?  "  ,| 

Duke's  face  fell.  "  But  without  money  passing,  it  ain't  ! 
legal."  ; 

"  But  I  jumped  out  of  bed  in  a  hurry — Jinny'll  bear  me  out.  1 
I  mean,"  he  added  hurriedly,  as  a  dramatic  interest  flickered  i 
across  Duke's  face,  "  look  at  my  slippers  !  "  1 

"  Oh,  I've  seen  your  stinking  old  slippers ! "  Duke  was  j 
getting  unpleasant.     "  What  I  want  to  see  is  my  money."  i 

"  Sorry,  old  boy — no  use  letting  your  dander  rise — it's  a  case  | 
of  H.G.I. —haven't  got  it,  and  M.O.I.U. — must  owe  it  you!] 
Still,  I  dare  say  we  can  rake  up  something  on  account,  to  make  ] 
a  legal  consideration.  Doubtless  Jinny  has  got  half  a  crown,  i 
Give  me  one.  Jinny,  till  I  get  home."  j 

Jinny,  who  had  always  hitherto  dealt  with  Polly,  and  been  \ 
scrupulously  paid,  had  no  hesitation  in  handing  him  the  coin.  ] 
She  did  not  know  it  was  the  cost  of  her  arbitration.  Duke  \ 
accepted  it  ungraciously  as  earnest  money.  I 

"  And  if  I  may  advise  you  how  to  run  your  own  show,  now  j 
you've  got  it  back,"  said  Tony  handsomely,  "  don't  go  so  much  ] 
by  the  fairs.  There's  not  only  the  waste  of  time  and  travel  in  i 
between  one  and  t'other,  it's  lowering  a  fine  art  to  the  level  of  a  \ 
merry-go-round  or  the  talking  lobst "  \ 

"  I  can't  wait  for  ever,"  interposed  Jinny.  "  Are  you  com-  \ 
ing  ?  "     She  opened  the  door.  ^ 

"  Your  time's  paid,"  said  Mr.  Flippance  severely.     "  However,  \ 
Duke  takes  my  meaning.     Here's  luck  to  him  !  "     And  with  a 
last  gulp  at  Duke's  gin,  he  followed  her  to  the  door.     "  Send  me  : 
my  scenery  and  props  and  the  same  cart  can  take  back  yours  i 
and  the  box  of  figures."  | 

"  No,  no,"  said  Duke,  "  that'll  need  several  journeys  or  carts,  j 
We  divide  the  freightage."  \ 

"  What !  When  I  throw  in  twenty-five  pounds  !  0  Duke,  ■ 
Duke,  if  you  ain't  careful  there'll  be  a  show  of  the  meanest  man  : 
on  earth."     And  shaking  his  fat  jewelled  forefinger  waggishly  at  , 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  315  j 

the  caravan  proprietor,  he  followed  the  Carrier.  "  Now  for  a  J 
last  kick  at  the  company,"  he  observed  to  her,  as  the  door  '; 
closed  upon  the  dismal  Duke.  i 


i 

But  at  that  moment  the  ground  resounded  with  gallant  hoofs,  \ 

and  a  handsome  red-haired  cavalier  riding  a  barebacked  black  > 

horse  and  leading  another  steed  of  Satan,  and  followed  by  a  ! 

bounding  little  white  dog,  brought  life  and  spirit  into  the  scene.  • 

The  rabbits  poked  their  noses  greedily  through  their  wires,  and  \ 

the  pig  grunted  in  perturbation.     Jinny,  shrinking  back  behind  | 

Mr.  Flippance,  remained  paralysed  on  the  steps  of  the  caravan,  \ 

while  Tony,  unconscious  that  he  was  needed  as  a  screen,  hurried  ! 

forward  with  a  joyous  greeting  and  a  query  which  served  the  \ 

purpose    as    effectually,   for   Jinny   was   left    unnoted    on    her  \ 

pedestal.  ; 

"  You  looking  for  me  ?  "  asked  Tony.  1 

"  I  was,"  answered  the  horseman.     "  But  now  Fm  looking  for  ] 

the  stables.     '  The  Black  Sheep's  '  full  up,  and  I  thought  I'd  put  j 

up  my  spare  horse  at  '  The  Learned  Pig '  till  I  could  find  you.  \ 

However,  here  you  are."  | 

"  But  you  crossed  me,  man,  just  outside  the  market !  "  \ 

"  Did  I  ?     Is  Jinny  here  ?     I  see  her  cart  outside."  \ 

"  Never  mind  Jinny — you're  just  in  the  nick  of  time.     I  want  j 

to  talk  business  to  you."  \ 

"  And  so  do  I   to  you.     If  I   crossed  you,  'twas  because   I  ;j 

was   galloping   to   you    with    the    horse   you    ordered    through  \ 

Jinny."  | 

"  And  I  was  galloping  to  her  to  cancel  it !  "  ] 

"  What !  "    cried  Will.      But   the   joyous   rush  and  gambol-  \ 

lings    of   Nip  now  directed  his  attention   to  Nip's   statuesque  'j 

mistress.  '\ 

■A 

"  I'm  afraid  you've  let  yourself  in  for  those  horses,"  she  said,  i 

descending.     She   did  not   speak  maliciously — the  sting  of  her  ; 

defeat  was  over,  now  that  his  victory  had  recoiled  on  the  victor,  j 

and  she  was  really  a  little  sorry  for  him.     But  all  other  feelings  1 

were  overwhelmed  for  the  moment  by  this  new  sense  of  dash  *| 

and  grace,  in  which  he  and  the  beautiful  pawing  steeds  were  j 

mixed  up   centaur-like,   his   figure  looking   so   much   taller   on  i 

horseback  that  it  almost  corresponded  to  Miss  Gentry's  ideal.  | 


316  JINNY  THE  CARRIER  | 

Unfortunately  Will  himself  had  no  sense  of  the  horses  except  as  ,^ 

a  costly  and  burdensome  mistake  :    the  iron  issuing  from  Jinny's  ; 

soul  was  entering  into  his.  ] 

"  But  surely  you  want  one  of  'em,"  he  said,  addressing  Mr.  | 

Flippance.     He  had  cherished  a  dim  hope  that  the  Showman  A 

might  launch  out  into  binary  grandeur,  but  at  the  worst  he  was  i 

prepared  to  keep  one  horse — it  would  be  useful  for  riding  into  l 

Chipstone — pending  its  sale.     But  to  have  two  horses  on  his  j 

hands,   eating  their  heads  off,  after  consuming  practically  the  | 

whole  of  his  capital — this  was  too  much.     Nor  could  he  believe  j 

that  Jinny  was  not  gloating  over  the  Nemesis  that  had  overtaken  l 

his  attempt  to  cnish  her  will.  j 

"  I  don't  see  what  I  shoiild  do   with  a  horse,"   said  Tony,  \ 

"  seeing  that  I'm  setting  up  the  Flippance  Palace  Theatre  as  a  ? 

local  landmark.     Of  course  I  might  have  a  play  written  round  j 

him,"  he  mused,  "  or  even  round  'em  both.     They  would  cer-  ] 

tainly  '  draw  '   all  Chipstone,  especially   with  a  carriage  behind  ^ 

'em.    Odd,  isn't  it  ?    There'll  be  scores  of  carriages  waiting  outside  j 

my  theatre,  yet  to  see  one  on  the  stage  gives  everybody  a  thrill.  | 

Lord,  how  the  public  does  love  to  see  natural  things  in  unnatural  ] 

places  !     As  my  old  pa  used  to  say — my  real  pa,  I  mean — put  \ 

an  idiot  on  the  stage  and  he  gives  pleasure,  put  him  in  the  stalls  j 

and  he  writes  dramatic  criticism  !     Ha,  ha,  ha  !  "  ^ 

"  Then  you  do  want  'em  ?  "  said  Will  eagerly.  \ 

"  If  you're  ready  to  bring  in  the  noble  animals  as  part  of  the  \ 

capital,  I'll  look  around  for  a  dramatist  to  work  'em  in."  \ 

"  You'd  best  look  around  for  a  capitalist,"  retorted  Will  in  ] 

angry  disappointment.     "  I've  told  you  before,  I'm  going  into^ 

farming."  j 

"Then  you'll  want  the  horses  yourself."  1 

"  They're  no  good  for  farming,"  Jinny  corrected.  j 

"  Ain't  they  ?  "  said  Tony,  surveying  them  with  a  fresh  eye.j 

"  Then  why  did  he  buy  them  ?  "  ! 

Will  got  angrier.     "  That's  my  business.     Do  you  want  them| 

or  not  ?  "  i 

"  I  can  always  do  with  anything.     A  play's  a  pie  you  canj 

shove  anything  into.    You'd  look  bully  yourself,  as  you  Americans \ 

say,  riding  just  as  you  are  :    just  a  cowboy  costume,  that's  all| 

you  need.     Will  you  do  it  ?  "  1 

"  WiU  I  do  what  ?  "  j 

"  Play  lead  and  supply  your  own  horses."  j 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE                            317  ] 

"  Don't   be   a   fool — or  try   to   make   me   one.     I'm   a   plain  ; 

farmer."  i 

Tony  grinned.     "  Jinny  don't  seem  to  think  'em  suitable  for  ] 

plain   farming.     I   reckon  you'd   better   set  up   as  undertaker.  1 

They'll  go  lovely  with  a  hearse.     AR  you  n:,ed  is  a  corpse."  ,i 

"  And  I  shan't  be  long  finding  one  !  "  hissed  Will.  \ 

Tony   clapped  his  hands.     "  That's   the   style.     Lord,    man,  | 

what  a  wasted  actor  !  "  j 

Jinny  could  not  suppress  a  smile.     It  brought  Will's  temper  to  I 

breaking-point.     "  These  horses  at  least  won't  be  wasted,"  he  * 

said  to  her  at  a  white  heat.     "  For  I'll  take  our  friend's  advice."  ) 

"  Harness  'em  to  a  hearse  ?  "  murmured  Jinny.  l 

"  No,  to  a  coach.     I'll  put  an  end,  miss,  to  your  mannish  i 

ways."  •  I 

"  Indeed !  "     Jinny    bridled    up,     without,    however,     quite  \ 

following  the  threat.  '] 

"  You've  done  for  yourself,"  he  explained.     "  You've  forced  \ 

me  into  competition.     You've  got  me  the  horses — there's  no  end  ] 

of  out-of-work  coaches  on  the  market  to  be  got  for  an  old  song.  ^ 

I'll  carry  passengers  and  luggage  faster  and  cheaper  than  you,  i 

and  heavier  stuff  too,  and  I'll  wipe  you  out."  1 

Jinny  grew  white,  but  at  the  venom  of  his  words,  not  their  ' 

business  significance.     Her  instinct  retorted  with  a  smile.     "  And  ] 

I  got  you  the  horn,  too,  don't  forget  that."  \ 

"  I  don't — I  was  thinking  of  that.     It's  all  your  doing — and  \ 

serve  you  jolly  well  right."     He  turned  sneeringly  to  Mr.  Flip-  j 

pance.     "  So  I  won't  be  a  wasted  musician  either."  ^ 

"  Oho  !  "  said  Jinny.     "  And  shall  we  see  you  on  the  box-seat  j 

all  a-crowing  and  a-blowing  ?  "  ] 

"  I  know  you  still  think  I  can't  blow — but  you  shall  see."  j 

"  Seeing  isn't  believing,"  said  Jinny.  j 

"  Had  you  there,  old  cock,"  said  Tony.  j 

"  She  knows  what  I  mean,  right  enough.     I'll  start  a  coach-  ^ 

service  'twixt  Little  Bradmarsh  and  Chipstone,  ay  and  farther  I 

too,  passengers  inside,  luggage  on  the  roof.     I'll  wake  up  this  ; 
sleepy  old  spot."     And  his  vigour  seemed  to  communicate  itself 

to  his  horses  :   they  caracoled  and  stamped.  ;j 

".  Better  let  sleeping  spots  lie,"  said  Jinny.     "  I  thought  you  ] 

hated  Yankee  going-ahead."  \ 

"  It'll   save  you  going  ahead,   anyhow,"   said   WiU.     "  Why  i 

didn't  you  let  things  sleep  ?  "  ^ 


3i8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Me  !     How  could  I  help  helping  Gran'fer  ?  " 

"  Women  have  always  got  an  excuse.  '  And  the  man  gave 
unto  me  and  I  did  eat.'  " 

"  Lord  !     He's  been  reading  the  Bible  !  "  laughed  Tony. 

Will  flushed.  All  those  hours  in  quest  of  orthography  passed 
through  his  mind.  And  what  had  all  his  painstaking  letters  led  to  ? 
Quarrels,  recriminations,  miseries.  Well,  let  him  have  done  v/ith 
it  all.  Ignore  her,  crush  her,  that  was  the  best  way.  Once  he 
had  driven  her  out  of  the  business,  that  tongue  of  hers  would 
wag  more  meekly.     Then,  perhaps ! 

A  rousing  blast  on  Jinny's  horn  cut  defiantly  into  his  thoughts. 
It  was  at  once  a  challenge  and  a  mockery.  Will  turned  his 
horses'  heads  sharply  and  trotted  out,  Nip  at  their  heels.  But 
at  the  edge  of  the  enclosure  Nip  looked  back  wistfully  to  beg  his 
mistress  to  join  the  party.  She,  however,  lowering  her  horn, 
cried,  "  Come  here,  you  naughty  dog.     Come  here  at  once." 

Nip  stood  in  pathetic  hesitation. 

"  It's  that  animal  my  play  shall  be  written  round,"  said  Tony 
decisively.     "  How  much  do  you  want  for  him  ?  " 

"  You  know^  I  wouldn't  part  with  him  for  love  or  money,"  said 
Jinny. 

"  Well,  I  haven't  got  any  money,"  said  Tony  slowly.  "  But 
if  you'd  like  the  other  thing " 

"  Don't  be  silly  !  "     Jinny  moved  towards  her  cart. 

"  I  mean  it — a  wife  like  you  would  be  the  making  of  a  man." 

"  Now  you'll  have  to  walk  home  !  "  said  Jinny,  springing  into 
her  seat.     It  was  too  ironic  a  climax  to  the  morning. 

"  Not  in  my  slippers  !  "  gasped  Tony. 

"  You  should  have  put  on  your  boots  !  "  said  Jinny  sternly. 

"  But  listen  !  "  He  clung  to  the  cart  as  if  he  would  stop  it. 
"  It's  a  heaven-sent  opportunity." 

"  It  must  be  sent  back,"  said  Jinny  gravely. 

"  I  mean  for  me,"  he  explained  desperately.  "  You  know 
how  Polly  objects  to  my  marrying  again.  Bvit  I've  got  to  break 
the  deal  with  Duke  to  her,  so  I  could  work  in  the  two  at  once.  It 
couldn't  be  worse." 

"  I  shall  never  marry,"  said  Jinny.     "  Gee  up  !  " 

"  But  whoa,  v/hoa,  you  don't  carry  only  your  husbands,"  cried 
Tony.     "  Stop  !  " 

He  pursued  Methusalem  for  some  yards,  but  even  Methusalem 
was  too  quick  for  him.      And  then,   as  he*  stood   panting  and 


CUPID  AND  CATTLE  319 

perspiring  and  overcome  by  a  dark  upwelling  of  disbelief  in  life, 
he  perceived  the  Duchess  with  her  manuscript  and  his  daughter 
returning  from  the  histrionic  consultation  at  "  The  Learned  Pig." 
"  Thank  the  Lord,  Polly's  feeding  out,"  he  murmured,  as  he 
slunk  into  a  doorway.  Then  his  face  brightened  up.  "  After 
all,"  he  thought,  "  I've  only  got  to  break  to  her  about  the 
theatre." 


CHAPTER  IX 

TWO  OF  A  TRADE 

This  comic  story  or  this  tragic  jest 

May  make  you  laugh  or  cry^  as  you  think  best. 

Gay,  Prologue  to  "  The  What  DVe  Call  It  ?  " 

I 

The  darkest  season  in  Jinny's  life — outwardly  a  feast  of  light — 
was  come  to  the  crowning  mockery  of  its  August  splendour. 
Day  after  day  there  was  the  lazy  pomp  of  high  summer  ;  massive 
white  clouds  in  a  blue  sky,  a  spacious  voluptuousness,  a  languid 
glory.  But  Jinny  felt  less  melancholy  on  the  rare  days  when 
sea-mists  rolled  in  from  the  marshes  and  spectral  sheep  were 
heard  tinkling  from  dim  meadows.  The  corn  was  now  cut,  and 
this  too  was  a  curious  alleviation  of  the  gnawing  at  her  heart. 
When  the  far-spreading  wheat-fields  had  rustled  in  the  sun  like 
the  hair  of  the  earth-mother,  an  auburn  gold  touched  with 
amber  and  purple  lights,  infinitely  subtle  and  suffusive,  the 
beauty  of  it  all  had  been  almost  intolerable.  Now  that  remorse- 
less reapers  had  turned  the  wheat  into  rows  of  stooks  that  were 
more  suggestive  of  the  hair  of  a  village  girl  in  curl-papers.  Jinny 
found  it  easier  to  jog  on  her  sorely  diminished  business  along  the 
sunbaked  roads. 

It  was  not  merely  that  Will  had  turned  from  a  swain  into  an 
enemy,  and  from  a  figure  of  romance  into  a  business  rival.  It 
was  not  merely  that  his  hated  handsome  visage  kept  coming  up 
in  her  mind  at  the  oddest  moments,  to  the  confusion  of  her 
work.     It  was  the  pressure  of  his  competition. 

Hitherto  Jinny  had  believed  in  mankind.  Despite  "  The 
Seven  Stages  of  Life,"  by  which  her  Spelling-Book  combined 
instruction  in  old  English  print  with  detailed  information  on  how 
the  Devil  blurs  God's  image  in  man  ;  despite  the  testifyings  of 
her  fellow-Peculiars  to  their  own  wickedness,  she  had  regarded 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  321 

her  fellow-beings  as  in  the  main  virtuous  and  kindly.  What  was 
she  to  think  of  human  nature  when  she  saw  this  dashing  innovator 
literally  "  carrying  "  all  before  him  ? 

In  her  pique  and  distress  she  failed  to  allow  for  the  sensation 
created  by  the  advent  of  the  small  seciond-hand  coach  with  its 
pair  of  high-stepping  black  horses.  Nothing  so  great  and 
momentous  had  happened  in  Bradmarsh  from  time  immemorial. 
Even  in  Jinny's  own  mind  it  loomed  as  large  as  any  of  the  events 
in  the  Spelling-Book,  from  Noah's  Flood  to  Trafalgar.  Through- 
out all  those  somnolent  Essex  by-ways  the  passage  of  the  novel 
equipage  brought  everybody  to  door  or  window.  It  was  equal 
to  the  passing  of  the  County  Flyer  on  the  main  roads,  a  thunder 
of  wheels  and  a  jingle  of  harness  and  a  music  of  the  horn.  True, 
two  horses  are  not  four,  and  a  driver  who  blows  his  own  trumpet 
has  not  the  grandeur  of  a  coachman  with  a  scarlet-coated  guard, 
not  to  mention  the  absence  of  relays  to  paw  the  ground  and  be 
switched  without  loss  of  a  second  to  the  fiery  vehicle.  Still,  with 
scarcely  a  hill  to  negotiate  before  Chipstone,  two  horses  and  a 
man  seemed  velocity  and  magnificence  to  villages  accustomed  to 
a  crawling  two-wheeled  tilt-cart  and  a  girl. 

And  the  Flynt  Flyer — as  it  styled  itself  in  vainglorious  paint — 
had  created  a  demand,  as  well  as  a  sensation,  even  if  the  want 
had  been  unfelt  before.  Starting  three  services  a  week  instead 
of  two,  it  moreover  dashed  and  zigzagged  into  corners  and  by- 
roads that  Jinny  had  never  pretended  to  serve,  the  denizens  of 
which  had  been  content  to  wait  at  cross-roads  and  landmarks,  or 
to  deal  with  her  through  intermediary  neighbours  or  houses  of 
call.  And  besides  these  attractions  of  convenience  and  novelty, 
there  was  the  comfort  for  passengers  of  riding  in  the  body  of 
the  coach  with  their  feet  in  the  straw,  instead  of  dangling  uneasily 
from  the  narrow  side-ledges  in  Jinny's  cart  or  sprawling  in 
contorted  adjustment  to  parcels  and  boxes.  Persons  who  had 
always  walked,  now  found  it  simpler  to  jump  into  the  coach 
than  to  fag  along  in  the  heat.  The  carrying  business  saw  itself 
transformed  and  extended. 

In  this  elegant  and  epoch-making  vehicle  the  non-human 
freight  overflowing  from  the  fore  and  hind  boots  was  stacked  on 
the  roof,  though  the  lucky  first-comer  had  always  space  to  sit  beside 
Will  and  hear  his  stories  of  the  great  world.  A  shipmate  from 
'Frisco  had  boasted  of  driving  in  kid  gloves  a  polished  silk-lined  cab 
and  spanking  fifteen-hundred-dollar  steeds  with  silver-gleaming 


322  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

harness,  and  earning  his  three  hundred  dollars  a  month.  The 
vision  beglamoured  Will's  own  status  on  the  box,  and  reconciled 
him  to  lifting  the  luggage  of  his  labouring  inferiors.  He  aped 
it  by  driving  in  his  best  Moses  &  Son  suit,  as  though  more  of  a 
sporting  charioteer  than  a  menial,  touting  for  custom.  And 
parcels  and  clients  flung  themselves  into  his  arms.  What 
wonder  if  the  high-piled  load  soon  out-topped  Jinny's,  revealed 
in  its  nakedness  on  these  sweltering  days  w^hen  she  drove 
without  her  tilt  1  For  gradually  folk's  eyes  seemed  opened, 
unsealed  of  a  spell.  Without  a  word  spoken  it  was  as  if  some- 
thing unnatural  and  monstrous  had  been  wafted  away,  and  the 
simple  order  of  nature — in  the  shape  of  a  male  carrier — ^had  been 
restored.  Without  being  quite  conscious  of  how  they  had 
lugged  their  own  boxes  for  the  puny  female,  customers  were 
aware  of  a  new  facility.  They  did  not  so  much  turn  against 
Jinny  as  forget  her  in  this  gravitation  to  the  natural  centre. 

At  first  Will  had — with  a  touch  of  considerateness — fixed  his 
days  on  Mondays,  Wednesdays,  and  Saturdays,  not  to  clash  with 
Jinny's  Tuesdays  and  Fridays.  But  as  his  supply  created  new 
demands,  as  he  found  he  could  widen  his  ambit  as  far  even  as 
Brandy  Hole  Creek  or  Blackripple,  he  took  on  new  circuits,  jfirst 
for  Tuesday  and  then  for  Friday  and  dropping  his  Wednesdays 
to  give  his  hard- worked  horses  a  solid  rest  in  mid-week.  It  was 
not  these  new  routes  of  his  that  galled  Jinny,  nor  his  impinging 
on  her  days — possibly  she  was  not  altogether  displeased  to  meet 
the  rival  vehicle.  No,  the  iron  that  entered  her  soul  was  the 
loss  of  her  previous  customers,  who,  despite  Will's  comparative 
magnanimity,  had  changed  their  day  to  suit  the  rival  round.  In 
the  cases  where  she  had  imagined  herself  a  friend  rather  than  an 
employee,  it  was  heart-breaking. 

Hence  this  new  and  rankling  doubt  of  her  species,  waxing  daily 
as  her  business  waned.  Folk  seemed  to  follow  one  another  like 
sheep,  and  whenever  now  on  a  bit  of  miry  road  she  came  upon 
the  serried  footmarks  of  a  flock,  she  shuddered  with  a  sense  of 
the  ignoble  pettiness  of  the  pattern :  no  massive  individual 
stamp  like  Methusalem's,  not  even  a  characteristic  dent  like 
Nip's,  but  an  ignominious  churning  of  mud  by  a  multiplication 
of  innumerable  little  identities.  Pigs,  too,  supplied  her  with 
bitter  comparisons  when,  with  her  cart  void  of  passengers  and 
almost  empty  of  parcels,  she  passed  at  some  cross-road  the  Flynt 
Flyer,  stiflingly  chock-full  of  both.     For^  she  had  often  noted  in 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  323 

the  feeding  of  swine  that  however  abundant  the  food  at  its 
snout,  master  pig  will  always  rush  to  the  thickest  jostling-point. 
Such  was  the  crowd,  such  was  humanity,  thought  our  little 
cynic  ;  who  was,  however,  no  mere  soured  philosopher,  but  a 
harassed  housekeeper,  with  a  couple  of  aged  dependents,  whose 
rashers  or  oats  were  becoming  seriously  endangered.  Methusalem 
had  always  lived  from  hoof  to  mouth,  and  as  for  her  grandfather, 
had  he  not  spent  all  his  savings  on  her  Angel-Mother's  debts  ?  There 
were  still  potatoes  in  the  store,  and  half  a  flitch  in  the  larder,  and 
beer  in  the  barrel,  and  vegetables  in  the  ground,  and  milk  in 
the  goats'  udders,  but  the  reserves  of  provender,  as  of  cash,  were 
small,  and  Methusalem,  whose  appetite  age  could  not  abate,  now 
began  to  loom  as  a  deficit  rather  than  an  asset.  Nip  was  the 
first  to  notice — and  with  pained  astonishment — the  parsimony  of 
the  new  regime.  Why  keep  a  mistress  if  one  is  to  be  practically 
thrown  back  on  one's  own  resources  ? 


II 

In  these  circumstances  it  scarcely  seemed  on  a  par  with  the 
ethics  of  the  Spelling-Book,  or  of  a  piece  with  Jinny's  character, 
that  she  should  go  to  Miss  Gentry  and  order  a  new  Sunday  dress 
of  pink  sprigged  muslin  of  the  latest  design — a  gown  that 
but  for  its  not  hooking  up  at  the  back  was  absolutely  ladylike. 
Still  less  that  she  should  drive  in  it  on  Tuesdays  and  Fridays. 
Whether  it  was  in  emulation  of  her  rival,  on  the  theory  that 
fashionableness  was  a  factor  of  his  success,  whether  it  was  to 
brighten  up  her  spirits,  or  to  exhibit  a  defiant  prosperity.  Jinny 
did  not  reveal,  even  to  herself.  But  that  it  was  worn  at  Will 
rather  than  on  herself,  may  be  deduced  from  the  fact  that  the 
commission  to  the  "  French  dressmaker  "  followed  hard  upon 
her  first  encounter  with  the  Flynt  Flyer  at  the  cross-roads. 

It  was  on  this  occasion — as  at  many  subsequent  meetings  on 
Tuesdays  or  Fridays — that  Nip  was  torn  almost  literally  in  two 
by  his  desire  to  be  in  both  vehicles  at  once.  That  they  should 
wish  to  pass  each  other  without  a  halt  or  even  a  hail  was  amazing 
to  the  poor  animal,  and  if  his  distraction  usually  ended  in  a  leap 
on  to  the  coach,  where  Will  was  never  without  a  beguiling 
biscuit,  he  was  always  careful  to  rejoin  the  cart  before  the 
interval  had  become  too  spacious.  Though  a  Nip-o'-both-sides, 
he  was  disloyal  to  neither  :   indeed,  if  ever  creature  did  his  best 


324  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

to  bring  two  foolish  mortals  together,  that  creature  was  Nip. 
But  they  no  longer  even  saluted  each  other.  At  first,  indeed, 
the  gentleman  driver  had  doffed  his  hat  gallantly,  but  Jinny's 
face  had  remained  a  stone,  though  that  stone  was  a  ruby.  Will, 
therefore,  when  he  had  to  meet  or  pass  her,  flew  by  at  a  rate 
which  by  its  air  of  insolent  superiority  only  increased  her  resent- 
ment. Later,  he  had  begun  to  slow  down  w^hen  he  espied  her 
lumbering  along  his  route,  and  to  play  the  "  Buy  a  Broom  " 
polka  on  his  horn  with  malicious  accuracy. 

By  way  of  retort  Jinny  once  tied  a  label  to  Nip's  collar,  marked 
"  In  charge  of  the  guard."  It  was  meant  to  taunt  Will  with 
lacking  the  dignity  of  a  true  driver,  who  never  blew  a  horn.  But 
the  somewhat  periphrastic  sarcasm  seemed  to  miss  fire,  for  Will 
took  the  label  literally,  and  when  Nip  had  executed  his  usual 
leap  on  to  the  coach,  he  kept  him  prisoner  for  several  days.  The 
faithful  animal,  though  fed  as  never  before,  was  as  unhappy,  tied 
on  the  roof,  as  Jinny  was,  and  when  her  cart  at  last  passed,  and 
her  horn  blew  imperiously  for  him,  he  made  such  a  supercanine 
effort  that  his  cord  snapped,  and  in  an  instant  he  was  snuggling 
hysterically  in  the  legitimate  lap  ;  regardless  of  that  flowery 
summery  fabric.  His  label,  she  found,  now  bore  the  words, 
"  Pay  Up  The  Gloves." 

Alas,  paying  up — ^whether  for  wagers  or  fabrics — was  out  of 
Jinny's  power.  That  very  morning  Miss  Gentry  had  handed 
her  the  bill,  delicately  wrapped  in  a  tract.  Such  a  situation  was 
quite  new  to  her,  though  not  unprovided  against  in  the  Spelling- 
Book  : 

Weigh  ev^ry  small  Expence  and  nothing  zoaste. 
Farthings,  if  sav^d,  amount  to  Pounds  in  Haste, 

This  had  been  a  large  expense,  yet  she  had  not  weighed  it.  It 
w^as  her  debts  and  not  her  savings  that  had  in  such  haste  amounted 
to  pounds.     Woe  to  the  pride  that  had  seduced  her  : 

What  the  weak  head  zvith  strongest  bias  rules 
Is  pride,  the  never-failing  Vice  of  Fools, 

She  did  not  need  her  book's  reminder  of  her  head's  weakness — 
only  too  dismally  she  recognized  that  strange  slipperiness  of 
memory  which  made  it  more  difficult  to  execute  her  commissions 
in^  proportion  as  their  number  dwindled.     Was  not  the  little 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  325 

notebook,  to  which  she  must  now   have    recourse,  the   abiding 
symbol  of  this  paradoxical  humiliation  ? 

She  was  not  psychologist  enough  to  understand  that  it  w^as  the 
very  perfection  of  her  memory  which  was  now  tripping  her  up. 
So  many  of  her  clients  had  for  so  long  demanded  the  same 
things  so  seasonably  that  she  was  automatically  compelled  to 
carry  out  commissions  that  had  now  lapsed.  She  was  like  an 
actress  who  knows  her  part  even  backw^ards,  but  is  broken  up 
and  confused  when  cuts  are  made  ;  finding  the  too  familiar  words 
not  to  be  ousted.  Jinny  would  mechanically  purchase  items  for 
clients  who  had  forsaken  her,  and  then — so  scatterbrained  was 
she  become — leave  them  at  other  customers'  houses  !  And  on 
the  other  hand,  she  was  capable  of  forgetting  the  orders  of  the 
few  faithful.  It  was  thus  that  under  the  combined  strain  of 
Miss  Gentry's  bill,  the  sultry  August  weather,  the  sight  of  the 
packed  coach  and  its  jaunty  driver,  the  frantic  return  of  Nip 
•with  his  mocking  message,  Jinny,  whom  necessity  had  compelled 
to  keep  Farmer  Gale  as  a  customer,  clean  forgot  his  urgent  need 
of  a  wedding-cake.  It  was  not  that  she  had  forgotten  to  order 
it  or  even  to  fetch  it  from  the  leading  confectioner's.  The 
sudden  union  of  Farmer  Gale  with  the  wealthy  land-surveyor's 
widow,  whose  piano-playing  had  excited  the  far-off  admiration 
of  Elijah  Skindle,  v^^as  too  sensational  an  event,  especially  to 
herself,  to  permit  of  complete  oblivion.  It  was  only  that  she 
forgot  to  deliver  the  cake  at  Beacon  Chimneys.  She  was  actually 
within  sight  of  the  stag-headed  poplars  that  marked  the  horizon 
of  home,  when,  turning  her  head  as  Nip  suddenly  leapt  for  a 
rabbit,  she  saw^  the  great  elegant  carton  in  ike  cart.  And  the 
wedding  was  on  the  morrow.  Conscience- stricken,  and  morbidly 
feeling  as  though  the  marriage  would  scarcely  be  legal  without 
this  colossal  confection,  she  resolved,  worn  out  as  she  was  with 
the  heat,  to  drive  back  to  the  house.  But  she  had  reckoned 
without  Methusalem.  To  turn  back  within  the  very  smeU  of 
his  stable  was  unprecedented  :  it  violated  every  equine  code. 
Like  Nip,  he  now  became  aware  of  the  instability  of  things — of  a 
new  order.  But,  more  obstinate,  he  refused  to  recognize  it. 
Nothing  short  of  the  w^hip — which  would  have  moved  him,  not 
out  of  pain  but  out  of  astonishment — could  have  sufficed  to 
turn  him,  and  how  could  a  mistress  who  knew  him  in  the  right 
and  herself  in  the  vv^rong,  resort  to  that,  especially  after  such  a 
sultry  day  ?     So  after  every  effort  to  coax  him  or  to  lead  him  by 


326  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  bridle  had  failed  and  almost  twenty  minrtes  had  been  wasteii, 
she  decided — in  \-iew  of  her  grandfather's  supper — to  make  a 
special  journey  the  first  thing  in  the  morning. 

As  she  gave  Methusalem  his  glad  head,  she  remembered  that 
it  was  just  before  the  turning  to  the  hymeneal  homestead  that 
she  had  met  that  scandalouslv  successful  coach. 


Ill 

Before  Jinny  reached  home  that  evening,  a  complainant  had 
already  called  at  Blackv^ater  Hall  to  unload  his  grievance.  Such 
visitors  were,  alas,  no  longer  a  novelty  to  Daniel  Quarles,  who 
had  one  day  begun  to  find  himself  no  merely  nominal  representa- 
tive of  the  business,  but  a  principal  charged  with  derelictions. 
His  virulent  rebuttals  of  the  reproaches  did  but  increase  the 
defections.  The  flouted  customers  made  no  allowances  for  the 
ferocities  of  senility,  and,  when  told  to  go  to  hell,  simply  went 
to  the  Flynt  Flyer — a  much  pleasanter  alternative.  Indeed, 
one  suspects  they  welcomed  the  insult  as  justifying  gravita- 
tion to  the  new  star.  The  indelicac^%  however,  of  divulging 
its  existence  to  the  nonagenarian  was  reserved  for  !Mr.  Elijah 
Skindle. 

That  rising  practitioner's  patronage  was  not  the  least  of 
Jinnv^s  humiliations.  Even  after  his  proposal  of  marriage,  she 
had  not  been  able  to  refuse  to  carry  dogs  to  and  from  his  establish- 
ment when  so  commanded  by  her  clients,  though  she  had  drawn 
the  line  at  orders  originating  from  himself.  Now,  however,  in 
justice  to  her  grandfather,  she  could  not  but  accept  his  com- 
missions, even  though  she  was  aware  they  were  largely  artifidai, 
mere  canals  for  communication  and  courtship.  Why,  for 
example,  could  not  Mr.  Skindle,  whose  gig  was  often  at  gardens 
buzzing  vfith  beehives,  not  purchase  his  ovm.  honey  r  WTiy 
must  she  procure  him  an  article  linkable  with  "  moons  "  and 
permitting  fatuous  references  to  "  sweetness  "  ?  His  protesta- 
tions of  lack  of  time  were  too  brazen  even  for  his  own  mouth  :  he 
stuttered  and  blushed  like  a  schoolboy.  It  will  be  seen  that 
Elijah's  deeper  self  had  not  accepted  his  "  lucky  "  escape  from 
her.  Hope  springs  eternal,  especially  when  the  desirable  one's 
pride  is  bent,  if  not  broken,  by  adversity.  That  proud  stomach 
which  had  rejected  his  proffered  luxuries  with  disdain  now  bade 
fair  to  be  empty.     Whfle  he,  moreover,  touched  nothing  he  did 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  327 

not  profit  by,  and  through  a  lucky  rise  in  animal  sickness  was 
fast  overtaking  the  respectable  Jorrow. 

With  an  audacity  almost  Napoleonic  he  had  conceived  the 
idea  of  at  once  blazoning  and  curing  his  baldness,  purchasing  a 
hair-restorer  through  Jinny  herself,  so  that  she  might  be  an 
accessory  to  the  improvement  at  which  he  was — obviously  for 
her  sake — slaving.  And  there  did  actually  begin  to  sprout  on 
his  cranium  microscopic  dots,  like  pepper  sprinkled  over  an  egg- 
shell. Elijah  lost  no  opportunity  now  of  lifting  his  cap  at  the 
sight  of  her,  though  he  had  not  yet  acquired  the  habit  of  removing 
it  indoors. 

"  Whoa  !  "  Elijah  drew  up  his  trap  in  the  grassy  lane  before 
Blackwater  Hall  and  jumped,  down.  The  afterglow  of  sunset 
was  in  the  sky,  but  the  Common  was  stUl  torpid  with  the  breeze- 
less  heat  of  the  day.  He  was  in  his  best  flannel  suit  and  smartest 
cap,  though  the  same  old  pipe  stuck  in  his  blackened  teeth. 
Removing  it,  he  rapped  at  the  door  with  it,  knocking  out  the 
ashes  with  the  same  taps.  As  nothing  happened,  he  tugged 
from  his  pocket  a  paper-wrapped  pot  and  thudded  at  the  door 
with  that.  He  had  been  simulating  rage,  for  he  had  come  to 
denounce  a  mistake,  though  enchanted  to  have  the  opportunity 
of  calling  on  Jinny.  But  now  for  fear  she  was  not  yet  back — 
and  vexed  with  himself  for  not  choosing  one  of  her  domestic 
days — he  began  to  get  really  ruffled.  He  lifted  the  larch  uncere- 
moniously, but  the  door  seemed  bolted.  Re-pocketing  the  pot 
with  an  unsmothered  oath,  he  moved  towards  the  living-room 
wall  and  peeped  through  the  wide-flung  little  casement.  Pah  ! 
Only  the  Gaffer  snoring  in  his  favourite  posture,  head  on  the 
family  Bible.  The  shabbiness  of  the  ancient  earth-coloured  smock- 
frock,  like  the  meanness  of  the  furniture,  added  to  Elijah's  disgust. 

"  Fancy  her  slaving  in  this  heat,"  he  mused,  "  when  she  might 
be  snoozing  on  my  horsehair  sofa  ! "  He  shouted  angrily, 
"  Wake  up,  you  old  codger." 

The  nonagenarian  obeyed  with  a  start.  '^  What's  amiss,  my 
little  mavis  r  "  he  yawned. 

"  I  ain't  a  mavis,"  EUjah  informed  him  irately,  "  I'm  a 
veterinary  surgeon." 

Daniel  Quarles  sprang  to  his  feet.  "  Marciful  powers  !  Any- 
thing wrong  with  Methusalem  ?  " 

"  No,  no — "  Elijah  assured  him  through  the  little  window, 
"  I've  come  about  Jinny." 


328  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

The  old  man  tottered  and  caught  at  his  chair.  "  An  accident 
to  Jinny  ?  " 

"  Stuff  and  nonsense  !  She'll  be  home  any  minute.  Can  I 
come  in  and  wait  for  her  ?  " 

Daniel  growled  and  grumbled.  "  Don't  you  see  Oi'm  busy 
readin'  the  Scriptures  ?  " 

"  I  won't  interfere  with  that."  He  moved  back  to  the  door 
and  rattled  the  latch  masterfully.  He  suddenly  saw  the  possi- 
bility of  pushing  his  suit  with  the  grandfather.  "  Why  do  you 
lock  yourself  in  ?  "  he  demanded,  as  the  bolts  creaked  back. 

"  Don't  you  see  they've  took  the  Dutch  clock  ?  "  said  the 
Gaffer  pitifully.  "  She  desarts  me  all  day  long,  and  Oi  can't 
have  my  eyes  every wheres." 

Elijah  glanced  up  at  the  clock  in  the  ante-room,  ticking  as 
imperturbably  as  ever. 

"  Why,  it's  up  there  !  "  he  said,  puzzled. 

"  Do  ye  don't  try  to  befool  me.  That's  the  same  face,  but 
they've  took  out  the  works  and  put  in  rubbidge.  But  it  ain't 
works  we're  justified  by,"  he  added  musingly. 

Elijah,  picking  his  way  among  the  old  cypress  chests,  followed 
him  into  the  living-room,  sat  down  unasked  on  the  settle,  and 
mechanically  pulled  out  his  pipe. 

"  Git  out  o'  my  house  !  "  roared  Daniel. 

Elijah's  pipe  fell  on  the  rush  mat. 

"  Boldero  hisself,"  explained  the  ancient,  "  never  durst  smoke 
in  my  nostrils..    And  who  be  you  ?  " 

Who  was  Boldero,  Elijah  thought  a  more  sensible  question. 
But  he  picked  up  his  pipe  with  an  apology.  "  All  right, 
uncle,  no  harm  done."  He  wiped  his  forehead.  "  Warm,  ain't 
it?" 

**  Then  why  do  ye  want  hell-smoke  r  " 

"  I  shouldn't  quite  call  this  hell-smoke,"  Elijah  deprecated. 

"  There's  no  smoke  without  hell-fire,"  Daniel  explained. 
"  Farmer  Thoroughgood,  he  smoked  just  such  a  pipe  as  yourn." 

"  And  he  was  thorough  good,  you  see,"  said  Elijah  with  an 
air  of  victorious  repartee. 

"  Thorough  bad,"  chuckled  the  Gaffer  with  a  still  greater  air 
of  wit.  "  Starved  his  missus  to  death.  The  neighbours  as 
come  to  see  the  corpse  found  her  on  a  bed  made  out  of  a  common 
sheep-hurdle,  stood  on  bricks."  He  tapped  the  Bible  with  a 
dirty  thumb.     "  Do  ye  don't  yoke  a  hoss  and  ass  together,  says 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  329 

the  Book.  But  that  evil-doer  used  to  plough  a  field  with  a  cow 
and  a  donkey,  and  when  it  ploughed  too  hard,  he'd  harness  an 
old  sow  in  front  of  the  donkey — there's  currant-trees  there  now 
what  pays  better,  not  needin'  no  ploughin'." 

"  Quite  like  the  old  song,"  observed  Elijah,  still  feeling  superior 
and  witty.     "  Inhere  was  a  cozv  went  out  to  plough  T 

"  Chrissimus  Day,  Chrissimus  Day^^  hummed  the  old  man. 
Set  agoing,  he  quavered  on  : 

"  T^here  was  a  pig  went  out  to  dig 
On  Chrissimus  Day  in  the  marning  ! 

Set  ye  down,"  he  broke  off  genially,  though  Elijah  was  already 
ensconced,  leg  over  knee.     "  Jinny'U  be  home  in  a  jifify." 

"  I  wonder  she's  so  long,"  Elijah  began  tentatively,  "  when 
she's  got  so  little  to  do." 

"  Ay,"  assented  the  ancient,  souring  again.  "  'Tis  me  that's 
got  the  whole  work  o'  the  place.  But  gals  likes  to  gad  about  in 
the  summer,  what  becomes  o'  the  old  folks  never  troubles  the 
young  'uns  nowadays." 

"  They  might  just  as  well  be  married,"  ventured  Elijah  boldly. 

"  Ay,  their  husbands  'ud  make  'em  work,"  said  the  Gaffer,  his 
eye  gleaming  maliciously.  *'  But  Oi  don't  howd  with  starvin' 
'em,  like  Farmer  Thoroughgood  did  his  missus.  When  they 
come  to  see  her  corpse  they  found  her  on  a  bed  made  out  of 
a  common  sheep-hurdle.  Ay,  and  he  used  to  plough  his  fields 
with  a " 

Elijah,  groaning  inwardly,  composed  himself  to  hear  the  story 
again.  Fortunately  there  was  a  fresh  development  at  the 
finish.  "  One  day  'twas  a  team  o'  bullocks  and  a  blind  hoss  he 
started  droivin'.  Powerful  warrum  it  war — wuss  than  to-day — 
and  the  flies  sow  worritin'  that  the  bullocks  set  their  tails  up 
and  bolted.  The  poor  blind  hoss  couldn't  see  where  to  goo  and 
fell  down.  The  oxen  couldn't  drag  him,  and  got  tangled  up  in 
the  traces-."  He  roared  with  laughter  at  the  picture,  and  Elijah 
grinned  too. 

"  Those  flies  do  worrit,"  he  agreed,  flicking  at  his  forehead. 
"  But  about  that  Jinny  of  yours "  he  added. 

"  She'll  onny  have  them  harmless  fly-papers,  you  see,"  said 
Daniel,  pointing  to  a  coloured  patch  on  the  ceiling,  blackened  by 
a  happy  multitude.  "  Ef  ye  can't  wait  for  her,"  he  added 
amiably,  "  Oi'll  give  her  your  message.     A  wet  you  said  ?  " 


330  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  A  veterinary  surgeon,  Mr.  Elijah  Skindle,"  said  Elijah 
grandly. 

"  Skindle  !  "  The  old  man  groped  agitatedly  in  his  memory. 
"  That's  a  name  Oi  know," 

"  Known  all  over  the  Hundred,"  said  Elijah  complacently. 
"  Ay,  and  they're  hearing  of  my  success  at  Colchester,  too,  where 
I  come  from." 

"  Cowchester  !  "  The  old  man  sprang  up.  "  That's  it — the 
man  as  married  Annie  1  But  that  ain't  you — ^he  had  more  hair 
to  him." 

"  Perhaps  it  was  my  father,"  said  Elijah,  flushing. 

"  Nay,  nay.  Annie  couldn't  have  a  son  your  soize,"  the 
Gaffer  pondered. 

"  My  mother's  name  is  Annie,"  said  Elijah. 

A  strange  fire  crept  into  the  old  patriarch's  eyes.  "  A  big- 
boned  mav/ther  of  a  girl,  tall  as  the  rod  her  father  lit  the  lamps 
with,  long  raven  hair  and  eyes  as  black  as  sloes,  and  a  wunnerful 
fine  buzzom,"  he  said  with  slow  voluptuousness.  "  Your  mother 
ain't  like  that  ?  " 

"  No,"  admitted  Elijah. 

Daniel  Quarles  heaved  a  sigh.  "  Oi  thought  not,  or  you'd  be 
more  of  a  beauty." 

"  Well,  you're  wrong,"  retorted  Elijah.  "  For  I've  heard  that 
my  grandfather  did  use  to  light  the  lamps  in  Chipstone,  and  it's 
a  great  shame  the  way  my  brothers  and  sisters  all  dump  her  on 
me  to  keep." 

The  old  man  seized  him  suddenly  by  the  coat-lapels.  "  She's 
back  in  Chipstone  ?  " 

"  Been  back  over  two  years — ever  since  father  died." 

"  He's  dead  ?  "  Elijah  felt  the  hands  trembHng  against  his 
breast. 

"  Of  course — and  I've  got  her  to  keep,  though  I'm  the 
youngest,"  he  grumbled. 

"  That's  the  same  luck  as  Oi  had,"  said  the  Gaffer,  "  with  this 
bit  of  property,  though  Sidrach,  he's  the  first-born."  He  dropped 
pensively  back  into  his  chair.  "  But  Oi  count  Annie's  better  off 
where  she  is,  bein'  as  Oi've  got  Jinny  to  keep  and  food  gittin' 
dearer  every  day,  she  says,  something  cruel.  And  happen 
Sidrach'll  come  back  too  when  he's  old,  not  havin'  landed  property 
like  me,  ne  yet  no  relations  in  Babylon.  Never  been  sech  a  year 
since  he  went  away — the  Brad  was  all  froze  over." 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  331 

Elijah  imprudently  recollected — to  the  old  man's  annoyance — 
that  it  had  frozen  equally  in  Queen  Victoria's  first  winter,  and 
he  brought  up  "  Murphy's  coldest  day,"  the  proverbial  lucky  hit 
of  an  almanack-maker.  Fortunately  the  Gaffer  recalled  an 
ancient  jest  of  Bundock's  :  "  Mother  Gander's  gin-bottle's  froze 
over,"  and  relaxed  in  genial  hysterics.  "  Ay,  she's  conwerted 
now,"  he  said,  wiping  his  rheumy  eyes.  "  But  what  an  adulteress 
in  them  days  !  Ye  couldn't  get  drunk  at  *  The  Black  Sheep  '  ef 
ye  tried — beer  without  hops  and  wine  without  gripes." 

Mechanically  drawing  out  his  pipe  and  popping  it  back  in 
alarm,  Elijah  reverted  to  Jinny.  Daniel  now  blamed  Methu- 
salem  for  her  lateness.  Horses,  too,  were  lazy  and  ungrateful, 
same  as  granddaughters. 

"  Why  don't  you  get  rid  of  him  ?  "  said  Elijah,  with  a  sudden 
inspiration.  That  would  cut  her  comb,  he  thought.  Jinny 
docked  of  Methusalem  would  be  ripe  for  the  marriage-altar. 
"  He's  long  past  his  work." 

But  Daniel  Quarles  shook  his  head,  "  Jinny  wouldn't  like  m^e 
to  part  with  that.     Besides,  who'd  buy  him  ?  " 

"  I  would,"  said  Elijah,  with  a  feeling  of  "  All  for  love,  or  the 
w^orld  well  lost." 

"  You  ?     Od  rabbet,  what  for  ?  " 

"  I'd  give  you  a  fiver  !  "  parried  the  knacker  in  his  reckless 
passion.  "  Though  most  people  let  me  have  'em  for  the  trouble 
of  killing  'em,"  he  added  incautiously. 

The  old  man  sprang  up  again.  "  Git  out  o'  my  house  !  And 
don't  ye  dare  cross  my  doorstep  agen  !  " 

Elijah  cowered  back  in  his  seat.  "  But  I've  come  on  busi- 
ness," he  protested. 

"  Oi  bain't  a-gooin'  to  sell  Methusalem." 

"  That's  not  what  I  came  for,"  Elijah  urged  soothingly.  "  It's 
about  Jinny." 

"  Oi  bain't  a-gooin'  to  sell  Jinny  neither." 

Elijah  winced.     Was  it  divination  or  drivel,  he  wondered. 

"  You  might  as  well  sell  her,"  he  said  boldly.  "  Look  how 
she's  mucking  up  your  business,  muddling  everything."  And 
rising  and  pulling  out  the  pot  again,  he  banged  it  down  on  the 
table. 

"  My  Jinny  muddle  things  !     Git  out  o'  my  house  !  " 

Before  the  Gaffer's  blazing  spectacles  and  furious  fangs  Elijah 
backed  doorwards. 


332  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Not  before  it's  set  right,"  he  said,  assured  of  his  line  of 
retreat. 

"  The  Quarleses  don't  make  muddles.     For  a  hundred  year " 

"  Oh,  Jinny's  been  all  right  the  last  hundred  years,"  he  inter- 
rupted impatiently.  "  It's  the  last  few  weeks  I  complain  about  ! 
I  hope  it's  not  sunstroke." 

"  My  Jinny  !  "  The  Gaffer's  anger  died.  "  She  went  away 
singin'  as  merry  as  could  be,  my  little  mavis,"  he  said 
anxiously. 

"  Then  what  do  you  make  of  that  ?  "     Elijah  indicated  the  pot. 

The  old  man  unwrapped  it  slowiy,  and  readjusting  his  spectacles 
spelt  out  the  label.  "  Oliver's  Depil — Depil — "  he  stumbled  on. 
"  Is  that  piUs  ?  " 

"  No,  it's  for  the  hair." 

"  Well,  that's  what  you  want,  ain't  it  ?  "  he  said  naively. 

Mr.  Skindle  coloured  up.  "  But  this  is  to  take  off  the  hair," 
he  explained. 

"  Well,  you  can't  do  that,"  chuckled  Daniel,  "  bein'  more  a 
'Lisha  than  a  'Lijah." 

"  Oh  yes,  I  can,"  said  Elijah,  his  every  dot  bristling.  "  But  if 
I  hadn't  been  a  noticing  man,  I  should  have  undone  all  the  good 
of  months  of  my  pots  of  hair-restorer." 

"  Whichever  way  it  be,  'tis  agen  Nature,"  said  the  Gaffer. 
"  The  Lord  giveth  and  the  Lord  taketh  away.  But  pots  be  as 
like  as  peas.     That's  the  shopman's  fault,  not  Jinny's." 

"  Oh,  indeed  !  "  cried  Elijah  savagely.  "  And  what  about  her 
bringing  me  hairpins  ?  " 

"  Hairpins !  "  gasped  the  Gaffer.  *'  Hairpins  for  a  man 
without  hair  !  " 

''  Even  Samson  in  his  prime  didn't  want  hairpins  !  "  Elijah 
pointed  out  angrily.  "  But  that's  what  she  brought  me  a  packet 
of  last  week,  instead  of  tobacco." 

"  Sarve  ye  right,  ye  unswept  chimbley,"  the  Gaffer  growled, 
with  a  grin. 

"  That  ain't  serving  me  right,"  riposted  Elijah.  "  That's 
serving  me  wrong,"  he  added  with  redoubled  wit.  "  And 
wouldn't  take  'em  back  neither,  the  little  minx,  maintained  I'd 
ordered  'em  for  my  ma." 

"  Well,  she^d  want  hairpins,  wouldn't  she,  with  all  that  beautiful 
raven  hair,"  said  the  Gaffer,  turning  serious.  "  Happen  you 
ordered  'em  for  her." 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  333 

^'  I  never  order  anything  for  her,"  said  Elijah,  waiving  the 
description  of  her  chevehire. 

"  More  shame  to  you,  then,  young  man.  Ye  don't  desarve  to 
have  her.  Same  as  ye're  too  stingy  to  pay  for  the  hairpins,  ye'd 
best  give  'em  to  her  with  Daniel  Quarles's  love." 

"  Fm  not  stingy !  "  retorted  Elijah  hotly.  "  Would  I  be 
keeping  my  mother,  with  the  poorhouse  so  handy,  and  me  the 
youngest,  too,  if  Elijah  Skindle  wasn't  the  most  generous  man 
in  Chipstone  ?  But  I  won't  pay  for  Jinny's  woolgathering. 
No  wonder  everybody's  going  to  the  coach  !  " 

"  The  coach  ?  "  repeated  Daniel  Quarles.     "  What  coach  ?  " 

"  Hasn't  Jinny  told  you  ?  "  cried  Elijah,  equally  astonished. 
"  The  handsomest  pair  of  black  horses " 

"  A  funeral  coach  ?  "  half-whispered  the  Gaffer,  paling.  The 
notion  of  slaughtering  Methusalem  had  already  brought  the 
thought  of  death  unpleasantly  near. 

"  You  and  Jinny  may  well  call  it  so,  old  sluggaby,"  said  Elijah 
grimly. 

The  old  man  fell  back  into  his  chair.  "  Nobody  never  needed 
no  funeral  coaches  here  !  "  he  quavered.  "  Our  shoulders  on 
the  corpse-path  was  good  enough  for  us.  'Tw^as  onny  that 
obstinacious  little  Dap,  when  poor  Pegs  laid  by  the  wall,  as 
wanted  one." 

"  Who's  talking  of  funeral  coaches  ?  "  snapped  Mr.  Skindle. 
"  Anyhow  I've  got  to  have  that  pot  changed." 

"  Git  out  o'  my  house  1  "  repeated  the  ancient  for  the  fourth 
time,  hurling  the  pot  out  of  the  window.     Luckily  it  fell  on  grass. 

Elijah's  patience  was  at  an  end.     Besides  it  had  now  occurred' 
to  him  he  might  cut  off  Jinny  on  the  route,  away  from  this 
tiresome  nonagenarian.     The  effort  to  woo  her  through  him  had 
been  baffled  by  his  inconsequence. 

"  Who's  hankering  after  your  wooden  chairs  ?  I've  got 
horsehair  at  home,"  he  retorted  crushingly. 

As  he  climbed  into  his  trap  he  heard  the  bolts  shot  behind 
him.  But  just  as  he  was  clucking  off  his  horse,  the  Gaffer's  head 
popped  frenziedly  through  the  casement. 

"  Stop  thief  !  "  it  cried.     "  Stop  !  " 

"  You  be  careful  what  you're  saying,  old  cockalorum,"  said 
Elijah  angrily,  lashing  his  horse  with  vicarious  wrath.  "  And 
pick  up  that  pot.     I  shan't  pay  for  it." 

"  You've  stole  my  spectacles  !     Oi  can't  find  'em  nowheres  !  " 


334  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Why,  you've  got  'em  on  1  "  Elijah  called  back  contemp- 
tuously. 

So  eagerly  did  his  horse  respond  to  the  whip  and  the  homeward 
impulse  that  Elijah  had  the  satisfaction  of  passing  the  equally 
enthusiastic  Methusalem  before  he  could  pull  up.  He  was  not 
even  sure  that  this  arrogantly  gowned  Jinny  had  acknowledged 
his  salute.  She  would  be  at  her  door  before  he  could  turn — 
confound  it  1  Why  had  he  not  waited  another  moment  or 
started  earlier  and  cut  her  off  at  a  remoter  point  ?  To  face  that 
old  dodderer  again  would  be  an  anti-cUmax. 

IV 

So  swiftly  did  Daniel  Quarles  nod  again  over  his  big  Bible  that 
by  the  time  Jinny  had  got  Methusalem.  stabled,  she  could  not 
rouse  him  to  undo  the  bolts,  and  all  her  merry  whistling  as  she 
neared  the  latch  was  a  wasted  pretence.  This  protective  habit  of 
his  indoors  was  a  recent  development,  coinciding  curiously  with 
the  advent  of  the  coach  she  was  concealing  from  him,  and  these 
closed  doors — even  his  bedroom  was  now  locked  from  within — 
annoyed  and  alarmed  her.  She  had  visions  of  him  agonizing  in 
his  bed  and  herself  reduced  to  breaking  open  the  door.  Perhaps 
even  now  he  was  ill,  dying,  dead  !  She  dashed  to  the  living-room 
window — stumbling  over  a  pot  outside  it.  Ah,  thank  God,  that 
dear,  peaceful  grey  head,  that  sonorous  snore  ! 

Pausing  now  to  pick  up  the  mysterious  pot,  she  was  distressed 
again.  The  passing  of  Elijah  was  explained  !  Miss  Gentry's 
Depilatory  she  had  brought  to  Mr.  Skindle,  Mr.  Skindle's  Hair 
Restorer  to  Miss  Gentry.  He  had  come  to  complain,  but  unable 
to  get  admission,  he  had  flung  the  pot  on  the  path.  Oh,  plaguy 
similarity  of  potted  pomades — fatal  double  error — she  had  killed 
two  clients  with  one  stone.  Her  eyes  filled  with  tears :  even 
with  a  notebook  she  could  not  keep  straight. 

So  guilty  did  she  look  as  she  scrambled  noiselessly  through  the 
casement,  that  an  observer  would  have  thought  her  a  burglar. 
Creeping  past  her  grandfather,  she  opened  the  house-door, — the 
gigantic  key  that  used  to  hang  on  the  beam  was  now  always  in 
the  lock — brought  in  the  carton  with  the  wedding-cake  from  the 
cart,  and  placed  it  on  the  chest  of  drawers  for  unfailing  reminder 
in  the  morning.  Then  swiftly  changing  into  her  old  frock  and 
hanging  up  the  new  behind  a  corner-curtain,  she  donned  her 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  335 

apron  and  stole  into  the  kitchen.  Finally,  to  lay  the  table,  she 
must  with  loving  hands  uplift  the  venerable  head. 

The  ancient  had  not  slept  off  his  perturbation,  though  he  did 
not  remember  the  cause  of  it,  and  seeing  his  supper  still  unlaid, 
he  was  righteously  wroth.  "  A  muddler,  mucking  up  everything 
— that's  what  you  be  1  "  he  said,  repeating  unconsciously  Elijah's 
indictment.  And  Jinny,  remembering  the  pot  that  now  stood 
by  the  wedding-cake,  went  about  wanly,  unresentfully,  with 
movements  lacking  their  wonted  deftness.  Her  grandfather  had 
already  forgotten  the  suggestion  of  sunstroke,  much  as  it  had 
shaken  him  :   for  her  actual  pallor  he  had  no  eye. 

When  she  finally  brought  in  the  meal,  she  found  him  risen 
and  standing  tranced  before ,  the  great  wedding-cake,  gazing 
dazedly  at  its  elaborately  frosted  architecture. 

"  You  didn't  want  to  open  it,"  she  cried  with  irrepressible 
petulance  as  she  hooked  down  the  pasteboard  lid. 

He  ignored  the  reproach.  "  Weddin's  and  funerals  in  one 
day,"  he  brooded.     "  Pomps  and  w^anities." 

"  Come  to  the  table,  Gran'fer,"  she  said  more  gently. 

"  Pomps  and  wanities  !  "  he  repeated.     "  Who's  this  for  ?  " 

"It's  for  Farmer  Gale's  wedding — 'twas  too  late  to  deliver  it. 
Come  along." 

"  In  my  day  folks  made  their  own  weddin '-cakes.  And  dedn't 
want  no  funeral  coaches  neither.  The  church-path  or  the  farm- 
wagon " 

"  Come  along !  "  She  took  his  arm.  "  There's  no  funeral 
coaches  here." 

A  whining  and  scratching  at  the  door  made  a  welcome  diver- 
sion. Nip,  back  from  the  hunting-path,  sneaked  in,  aware  of 
sin,  with  ears  flat,  tail  abased,  and  sidelong  squint. 

"  Ain't  seen  that  for  days,"  said  the  Gaffer.  "  Where's  that 
been  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  lied,  glad  of  Nip's  guilty  air,  for  to  explain 
would  reveal  the  coach.     "  On  the  razzle-dazzle,  I  suppose." 

Aitei  supper,  she  remembered  a  box  must  be  put  in  the  ante- 
room that  had  been  left  with  her  to  be  called  for.  It  was  stupid 
not  to  have  brought  it  in  at  once,  ere  the  cart  had  been  put  in 
its  shed — as  stupid  as  her  pot-swapping.  In  a  sudden  fear  that 
if  unremoved  to-night  she  would  carry  it  off  to  Farmer  Gale's 
wedding  just  when  the  owner  would  be  coming  for  it,  she  asked 
her  grandfather  to  lend  a  hand  with  it.     It  was  an  unfortunate 


336  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

request,  for  as  the  still  sinewy  veteran  was  dragging  his  end 
over  the  sill,  he  said  weirdly  :  "  There  ain't  no  man  in  Bradmarsh 
more  lugsome'n  that.     Who  wants  your  new-fangled  coach  ?  " 

"  What  coach  ?  "  murmured  Jinny,  half  puzzled,  half  appre- 
hensive. 

"  The  funeral  coach."  He  stood  still.  *'  Where  else  'ould  a 
coffin  goo  ?  " 

"  Rubbish,  Gran'fer.  There's  no  funeral  coach."  Her  little 
silvery  voice  rang  out.  "  Heave  away^  my  Johnny,  Come  along, 
Gran'fer,  I've  got  to  rub  down  Methusalem — ^you'll  be  too 
tired  now." 

"  No  funeral  coach  ?  "  he  repeated  slowly,  loosing  the  box. 

"  You've  been  dreaming,  Gran'fer." 

"  But  the  two  black  horses "  ^ 

Her  heart  beat  like  a  criminal's  on  the  eve  of  detection. 
"  Nightmares  !  "  she  laughed.     "  What  did  I  say  ?  " 

"  But  he  said !  " 

"  Who  said  ?  " 

"  Annie's  buoy-oy." 

"  Annie's ?  " 

"  'Lijah,  he  calls  hisself." 

"  Elijah  ?  And  did  he  go  up  in  a  chariot  of  fire  with  the 
horses  ?  "  And  more  than  ever  incensed  against  Mr.  Skindle, 
she  hastily  started  her  carrier's  chanty  : 

"  There  is  Hey,  there  is  Ree^ 

Automatically  his  sepulchral  bass  exuded,  and  his  arms 
reclasped  the  box  : 

"  There  is  Hoo,  there  is  Gee " 

Then  together  their  antithetical  voices  rolled  out  joyously  as 
the  box  moved  forward  : 

"  But  the  bob'tailed  mare  hears  the  bells  away^ 

Inwardly  she  was  thinking  that  a  "  funeral  coach  "  was  just 
what  it  was.  Did  its  bells  not  ring  the  knell  of  all  the  peaceful 
past  ?  Yes,  it  was  the  hearse  of  her  past,  of  her  youth.  And 
somehow — somehow — she  must  readjust  herself  to  the  strange 
raw  cruelty  of  the  present. 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  337 

V 

She  resettled  him  before  his  Bible.  But  when  she  returned 
from  the  stable,  he  had  wandered  again  to  the  chest  of  drawers, 
and  was  now  holding  up  the  pot. 

"  And  ye  told  me  Oi  was  dreamin'  !  "  he  said  angrily.  "  Why 
did  ye  lie  to  me  ?  " 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Gran'fer  ?  "  she  said,  flushing. 

"  How  did  that  pot  come  here  ?  " 

"  I  brought  it,  of  course." 

''  No,  you  dedn't.     x\nnie's  good-for-nawthen  son  brought  it." 

''  But  I  brought  it  in,"  she  persisted.  "  It  was  lying  on  the 
path." 

"  Ah  !     Oi  mind  me  now — he, threw  it  at  me." 

"  The  wretch  !  "said  Jinny,  believing  him.  "  Poor  Gran'fer  !  " 
she  cried  with  self-reproach,  patting  his  hairy  hand.  "  But  it's 
bedtime.     Come  along  !  '' 

"  Why  did  ye  lie  to  me  ?  "  he  repeated,  unappeased. 

"  There's  no  funeral  coach,"  she  persisted.  But  even  as  she 
spoke,  the  faint  tooting  of  a  horn  was  heard  from  afar.  Nip,  idly 
gulping  at  flies,  pricked  up  his  ears  ;   the  ancient  uttered  a  cry  : 

"  The  coach  !     The  coach  !  " 

Jinny's  hand  clutched  his  more  tightly.  They  could  now  hear 
the  distant  rattling  and  jingling — the  Flynt  Flyer  was  incredibly 
coming  their  way,  along  that  grass-grown  road.  What  was  it 
doing  by  that  lonely  Common,  she  wondered  tremulously.  What 
customers  were  there  to  steal  here  ?  Did  the  pirate  hanker  even 
after  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  ? 

"  You'll  lose  your  beauty  sleep,  Gran'fer  !  "  She  drew  him 
towards  the  corkscrew  staircase.  But  he  broke  from  her  convul- 
sively and  hobbled  out  into  the  path,  and  stood  with  hand  at 
ear  towards  the  advancing  clatter.  To  be  seen  staring  at  its 
meteoric  passing  would  be  too  dreadful. 

"  Go  in,  Nip,"  she  cried  with  unwonted  harshness.  "  Alt  you 
coming,  Gran'fer  ?  "  she  said,  following  the  dog,  '^  or  shall  I  bolt 
you  out  ?  Must  bolt  up  against  thieves,  you  know."  And  she 
began  singing  cheerily : 

"  There  is  Hey\  there  is  ReeP 

"  Nay,  'tis  the  black  hosses  that  bears  the  bells  away,  curse 
'em.     What  should  coaches  be  doing  in  these  parts  ?  " 

Y 


338  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Same  as  me,  I  suppose,"  she  said  with  desperate  lightness. 

"  It's  only  that  young  man  who  fancies  himself  a-driving  and 

a-blowing." 

"  A  young  man  come  to  steal  my  business  !  " 

"  Well,  one  can't  lock  that  up  !     Come  in,  Gran'fer." 

"  Oi'U  lock  him  up  !     What's  the  thief's  name  ?  " 

"  He's  not  a  thief.     It's  the  young  man  from  Frog  Farm." 

"  That  whippersnapper  !     Come  with  a  coach  to  drive  over 

you  and  me !  " 

"  That's  just  what  he'd  try  to  do  if  we  stand  here  !     Come 

inside — the  jackanips'll  only  think   we're  envying  his  bonkka 


turn-out." 


The  argument  and  the  touch  of  idiom  succeeded,  though  she 
could  feel  his  form  shaking  with  passion  as  she  drew  him  in. 
"  Why  did  ye  keep  it  from  me  ?  "  he  asked  pitifully. 

"  Because  I  knew  you'd  get  in  a  state."  As  she  shot  the  bolts, 
the  better  to  shut  Will  out,  she  realized  that  her  beating  heart 
was  somehow  left  outside,  and  that  it  was  drawing  her  after  it 
through  doors  howsoever  barred  and  windows  howsoever  fastened, 
if  only  to  watch  the  pageant  of  his  passing. 

"  A  funeral  coach,"  the  ancient  v/as  mumbling,  "  you  and 
Jinny  may  well  call  it  so,  ole  sluggaby." 

"  Yes,  indeed,  we  may,  Gran'fer,"  she  said,  smiling.  "  For  it's 
his  own  funeral  he's  conducting.     He'll  soon  come  a  cropper." 

"  Blast  him  !  "  growled  the  Gaffer. 

"  Hush  !  "     Jinny  was  shocked.     "  It's  all  as  fair  as  fair." 

"  For  over  a  hundred  year  Vve've  fetched  and  carried  'twixt 
Bradmarsh  and  Chipstone,  and  now  this  scallywag  with  his  new- 
fangled black  hosses ^"     A  fit  of  coughing  broke  off  the  speech, 

and  he  suddenly  looked  so  much  like  the  last  stage  of  man  in  the 
Spelling-Book  that  Jinny  had  to  put  him  back  into  his  chair. 

"  Didn't  I  say  you'd  get  into  a  state  ?  But  you  know  there's 
more  carrying  than  I — than  we  can  manage.  Haven't  you  sent 
lots  of  our  customers  away  ?  " 

"  Curse  'em  !  "  said  the  Gaffer  comprehensively.  "  Warmin  ! 
And  Oi  told  'em  sow  to  their  head  !  " 

"  He's  only  got  our  leavings,  you  see."  And  she  burst  out  in 
gay  parody  : 

"  There  is  black,  both  of  black. 
Let  ^em  run  till  they  crack, 
^Tis  Methusalem  hears  the  bells  away!^ 


TW6  OF  A  TRADE  339 

But  the  bells  were  now  jingling  nearer  and  nearer — ^jingling  in 
victorious  arrogance.  The  old  man  started  up  again  in  his  chair. 
"  How  dare  Caleb  Flynt's  lad  set  hisself  up  agen  me  ?  " 

"  Don't,  Gran'fer."  She  pressed  him  down.  "  Competition, 
folks  call  it.     He's  got  to  earn  his  living  just  like  us." 

"  Nobody  shan't  come  competitioning  here."  He  broke  from 
her  again.  "  Daniel  shall  be  an  adder  what  biteth  the  hoss 
heels."     He  began  unbolting  the  door. 

"You'll  never  be  able  to  bite  his  horse  heels,"  she  urged. 
"  They  fly  by  like  the  wind." 

She  had  a  sick  fear  the  old  man  would  hurl  himself  at  the 
bridles,  be  dragged  to  death.  But  to  her  astonishment,  ere  he 
had  lifted  the  latch,  she  heard  the  horses  slowing  down.  The 
eight  sounding  hoofs,  the  clanging  swingle-trees  and  harness,  the 
great  road-grinding  equipage,  were  actually  coming  to  a  halt  at 
her  porch. 

"  Whoa,  Snowdrop  !  Easy  there,  Cherry-blossom ! "  She 
knew  the  humour  of  these  names  of  theirs,  as  she  knew  from  a 
hundred  channels  of  gossip  everything  about  their  owner,  even 
to  the  identity  of  the  blonde  young  female  from  Foxearth  Farm 
who  was  so  persistently  a  passenger. 

So  he  had  been  forced  to  humiliate  himself,  to  make  the  first 
approach — it  was  she  who  had,  after  all,  been  the  conqueror,  who 
had  held  out  the  longer  1  And  in  a  swift  flood  of  emotion  she 
felt  more  than  ever  the  injustice  of  her  grandfather's  standpoint. 
Will  had  not  "  come  competitioning."  It  had  all  been  unpre- 
meditated. The  horses  had  been  left  on  his  hands  by  that 
harum-scarum  Showman.  And  anyhow,  was  he  not  serving  the 
countryside  better  than  she  with  her  ramshackle  little  cart  ? 
But  whatever  the  rights  and  the  wrongs,  a  scene  between  the 
two  men  must  be  prevented. 

"  He's  come  to  eat  humble  pie,  Gran'fer,"  she  whispered. 
"  But  we  don't  see  people  after  office  hours — and  it's  your 
bedtime." 

"  Oi'U  show  him  who's  who,"  said  the  Gaffer,  disregarding  her. 

"  But  you  can't  do  that  like  this  !  "  she  urged  with  the  cunning 
of  desperation.     "  Put  on  your  Sunday  smock." 

"Ay,  ay!  Oi'll  larn  him  to  come  crakin'  and  vauntin'." 
His  face  lit  up  with  baleful  satisfaction,  as  he  thought  of  the 
rare  stitching  in  the  gathers  and  patterns  of  that  frock  of  fine 
linen. 


340  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

As  Jinny,  relieved,  was  sheep-dogging  him  up  to  his  room,  they 
heard  the  butt-end  of  a  whip  beating  at  the  house-door. 

•'  Daniel  Quarles  takes  his  time,  young  man,"  the  Gaffer 
observed  to  the  cobwebbed  corkscrew  staircase.  And  to  Jinny, 
when  she  shut  his  door  on  him,  he  called  back  :  "  Do  ye  don't 
forgit  to  put  out  the  beer.     And  two  glasses." 


VI 

That  imperious  butt-end  gave  no  time  to  change  back  to  her 
own  ostentatious  costume.  But  she  did  not  pause  even  to  tear 
off  her  flecked  apron.  After  all,  in  face  of  his  surrender,  she 
could  forgo  arrogance  of  appearance.  Besides,  he  would  scarcely 
have  time  to  notice  anything,  so  swiftly  must  she  be  rid  of  him— 
however  she  might  savour  his  surrender — before  her  grandfather 
could  re-descend  upon  him.  True,  the  call  for  beer  showed  a 
relaxed  tension,  but  who  could  predict  the  effect  of  quaffing  it 
upon  two  hot-tempered  males  ?  Ignoring  the  injunction,  she 
hurried  to  the  house-door. 

"  Good  evening.  Miss  Boldero." 

She  w^as  a  shade  disconcerted  by  the  formality.  But  a  great 
waft  of  the  old  friendship  seemed  to  emanate  from  his  frank  eyes 
and  the  red  hair  his  hat-lifting  uncovered.  She  felt  herself 
drawn  to  that  flame  like  a  poor  little  moth  :  she  wanted  to  fall 
upon  his  magnanimous  morning-jacket,  to  sob  away  her  sin  of 
pride. 

"  Good  evening,  Mr.  Flynt,"  she  murmured. 

He  was  astonished  at  the  sight  of  her,  and  taken  aback. 
Mentally  he  had  shaken  her  off,  had  ridden  over  her  by  force  of 
will,  finding  occupation  and  e:diilaration  in  his  new  and  pros- 
perous adventure ;  finding  consolation,  too,  in  the  creamy 
beauty  of  the  girl  who  shuttled  with  such  suspicious  frequency 
in  the  Flynt  Flyer.  Blanche  suggested  not  only  cream  but 
butter,  so  pliant  and  pattable  did  she  seem,  so  ready  to  take  the 
impress  of  Will's  personality.  That  was  very  restful  after  the 
intense  irritativeness  of  the  rival  carrier. 

For  irritativeness  still  remained  to  him  Jinny's  essence — even 
in  their  alienation.  Her  horn-blowing  still  jarred,  her  pink 
muslin  dress  was  a  new  provocation.  He  v/as  vexed  at  her 
jog-trot  apathy  when  their  vehicles  passed,  an  apathy  that  took 
the  sting  out  of  his  speed.     He  was  piqued  that  she  did  not 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  341 

complairx  to  any  one  of  his  competition,  that  she  took  no  steps 
of  reprisal,  made  no  objection  even  to  Nip's  visits  to  him.  But 
the  central  irritation  in  all  these  fleeting  glimpses  and  encounters 
had  been  her  prettiness. 

Now,  seeing  her  close  for  the  first  time  since  their  quarrel  at 
the  cattle-market,  and  without  her  being  whisked  away,  he  had  a 
shock.  Why,  she  was  not  pretty  at  all :  she  was  shabby  and 
wan  !  Where  was  the  sparkle  that  had  haunted  the  depths  of 
him  ?  The  real  Jinny  was,  it  suddenly  became  patent,  a  worn 
creature  with  shadov/s  under  her  eyes  and  little  lines  on  her 
forehead.  How  could  he  ever  have  imagined  her  attractive  I 
Why,  Blanche  was  like  a  sultana  beside  her. 

But  if  the  thrill  he  had  expected  to  feel  was  replaced  by  this 
dull  disappointment,  another  emotion  did  not  fail  to  supervene. 
It  was  pity — pity  not  unmixed  with  compunction.  Had  it  been 
so  manly  as  he  had  thought,  to  come  interfering  with  her  business, 
violating  the  immemorial  local  tradition  which  assigned  the 
carrying  to  a  Quarles  ? 

**  Won't  you  come  in  ?  "  she  was  forced  to  say,  seeing  him 
silent  and  petrified  in  the  porch. 

"  Thank  you — I've  only  brought  this  from  Miss  Gentry,"  he 
answered  in  awkward  negation.  He  had  come  to  jeer,  but  now 
he  held  the  pot  of  Hair  Restorer  apologetically. 

Jinny  went  from  white  to  red.  It  was  the  supreme  humilia- 
tion. Not  only  had  he  not  come  to  make  it  up  :  he  had  come 
at  the  culminating  moment  of  his  triumph — sent  as  a  carrier  to 
her  !  And  sent  not  merely  with  a  parcel,  but  with  the  proof  of 
her  blundering  ! 

"  How  kind  of  her  !  "  she  said,  taking  it,  but  neither  her  hand 
nor  her  voice  was  steady.     ''  Did  she  send  any  message  with  it  ?  " 

"  Not  particularly."  He  had  meant  to  rub  in  Miss  Gentry's 
denunciations  of  female  stupidity,  to  demand  the  other  pot,  but 
his  heart  failed. 

"  Well,  thank  her  for  her  present,"  said  poor  Jinny,  struggling 
hard  for  composure.  "  And  tell  her  I'll  be  giving  her  something 
i  n  return  on  my  next  round." 

He  suppressed  a  smile  ;  shamed  from,  it  by  the  pathos  of  her 
courage. 

"  I  guess  she  means  it  for  your  grandfather,"  he  said  chival- 
rously. 

"  Perhaps  she  does,"  Jinny  murmured.     She  turned  away  to 


342  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

close  the  door  on  herself.  The  beautiful  black  horses  pawed  the 
ground  impatiently.  Will  shuffled  and  squirmed  less  gracefully 
— there  seemed  nothing  to  do  but  to  go.  Had  he  not  refused  to 
step  inside  ?  But  he  had  taken  her  at  the  end  of  his  long  round, 
he  had  deposited  all  his  passengers  and  packages,  and  he  felt 
loth  to  leave  her  thus.  A  resolution  was  forming  within  him — 
generating  so  rapidly  in  the  warmth  of  compunction  and  renewed 
comradeship,  that  possibly  the  germs  of  it  had  already  taken 
root  in  his  subconsciousness  when  Nip's  label  brought  him  her  ^ 
sneer  at  his  lack  of  a  guard. 

"  It's  very  hot,"  he  fenced,  lingering.  "  Can  I  have  a  glass 
of  water  ?  "  • 

She  started,  remembering  the  Gaffer's  adm.onition. 

"  Oh,  won't  you  have  a  glass  of  beer  ?  " 

"  No,  thanks,  just  Adam's  ale." 

Almost  liquefied  herself  by  feeling  this  son  of  Adam  needed 
her, — even  thus  slightly — she  moved  swiftly  to  and  fro,  returning 
with  the  glass.  But  not  so  swiftly  that  she  had  not  smuggled 
Oliver's  Depilatory  and  the  wedding-cake  into  the  kitchen  in 
case  he  should  yet  come  in.  He  took  the  glass,  managing  to 
touch  her  cold  trembling  fingers. 

"  Much  obliged,"  he  said,  after  a  deep  draught,  and  this  time 
it  was  her  fingers  that  were  drawn,  though  less  consciously,  to 
touch  his  round  the  returned  glass.  Then,  swallowing  something 
harder  than  water,  "  I've  been  thinking  about  it  all.  Jinny, 
and  I'm  sorry "  he  blurted. 

"  Ha  !  "     Her  heart  leapt  up  again. 

"  Sorry  for  you,"  he  explained. 

"  For  me  ?  "     Her  face  hardened. 

"  I — I — mean,"  he  corrected,  stammeringly,  "  sorry  to  hurt 
your  business." 

"  You  haven't  hurt  my  business  !  There's  room  for  both  ! 
It's  a  fair  competition." 

"  It's  very  forgiving  of  you  to  say  so.  But  I  said  I'd  start  a 
coach-service  and  I  had  to  make  my  word  good,  hadn't  I  ?  A 
man  can't  say  a  thing  and  leave  it  empty  air." 

"  No."  In  her  new  humility  she  was  prepared  to  admire 
such  solid  manhood. 

"  But  that's  no  reason  why  we  should  be  bad  friends,  is  it  ? ' 

She  had  thought  that  it  was  ;  now,  that  attitude  of  hers 
seemed  childishly  foolish.     Self-abasement  kept  her  dumb. 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  343 

"  No  reason,"  he  repeated,  mistaking  her  silence  for  obstinacy, 
"  why  we  shouldn't  shake  hands." 

"  Only  this  glass,"  she  flashed  more  happily.  But  it  shook  in 
her  hand. 

"  Ah  !  "  He  sighed  with  satisfaction.  The  way  to  his  propo- 
sition lay  open.     He  could  broach  it  at  once. 

"  Much  better  to  pull  together,  eh  ?  " 

"  Much,"  she  echoed.  How  sweet  to  see  the  mists  of  folly  and 
bitterness  rolling  away,  to  feel  the  weight  lifting  from  her  heart. 
Impulsively  she  held  out  her  left  hand,  and  as  he  clasped  it,  the 
warmth  that  came  to  him  from  its  cold  firmness  somewhat  shook 
his  sense  of  Blanche's  surpassing  charm.  Charm,  in  fact,  seemed 
— to  his  bewilderment — to  be  independent  of  beauty.  Or  was  it 
that  what  radiated  from  Jinny's  little  hand  was  a  sense  of 
capable  comradeship,  missing  from  that  large  limp  palm  wliich 
received  but  did  not  give  ?  Well,  but  comradeship  was  what  he 
wanted,  what  he  was  now  going  to  propose.  And  if  charm  was 
thrown  in,  so  much  the  better  for  the  partnership. 

"  Aha,  Son  of  Belial !  So  ye've  come  to  bog  and  vaunt  your 
horn  here  !  " 

It  was  her  forgotten  grandfather.  Startled  from  her  day- 
dream, she  dropped  the  glass  and  it  shivered  to  fragments.  In 
the  dusk  Daniel  Quarles,  wizened  though  he  was,  loomed  pro- 
phetic over  them  in  snowy  beard  and  smock,  his  forehead  gloomed 
with  thunder  and  his  ancient  beaver. 


VII 

Will  drew  out  his  white  handkerchief,  and  tying  it  on  his  whip 
waved  it  humorously. 

The  old  man  was  disconcerted  in  his  Biblical  vein.  "  This  be 
a  rummy  'un,  Jinny.     Is  he  off  his  head  ?  " 

"  No,  Gran'fer — that's  a  flag  of  truce.  A  signal  he's  got 
something  friendly  to  say." 

The  Gaffer  turned  on  her.  "  Then  why  don't  ye  arx  him  inside 
like  a  Christian,  'stead  o'  breakin'  my  glasses  ?  " 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Quarles,"  said  Will  swiftly.  He  lowered  the 
flag,  and  almost  rushed  across  the  threshold.  Jinny  retreated 
before  him,  and  the  trio  passed  silently  through  the  ticking  ante- 
chamber. 

"  Why  don't  ye  loight   the  lamp  ?  "   the   Gaffer  grumbled. 


344  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Jinny  gratefully  flew  to  hide  her  perturbation  in  the  kitchen. 
True,  she  would  only  be  throwing  more  light  upon  it.  But  the 
breathing-space  was  welcome. 

"  Hadn't  you  better  have  a  look  at  my  coach  before  it  gets 
darker  ?  "  Will  was  reminded  to  say. 

"  Curse  your  coach  !  "     He  had  reawakened  the  prophet. 

"  Easy,  there  !  "  said  Will,  untying  his  handkerchief.  "  It's 
to  be  a  family  coach  now,  you  see." 

"  Family  coach  !  "  repeated  Daniel,  puzzled. 

Jinny,  fumbling  at  the  lamp  with  butter-fingers,  was  glad  it 
had  not  yet  illumined  her  blushes.  For,  mingled  with  the 
rapturous  tumult  at  her  heart  was  a  shrinking  sense  of  impending 
publicity,  of  ethereal  emotions  too  swiftly  and  masterfully 
translated  into  gross  commitments.  How  had  her  mere  passive 
acquiescence  in  a  better  relationship  warranted  Will's  larger 
assumptions  ? 

"  Well,  that's  what  it'll  be  if  you  accept  my  proposition,  won't 
it  ?  "  she  heard  Will  say. 

"  Set  ye  down,  set  ye  down  !  "  said  Daniel.  "  What's  your 
proposition  ?     Jinny,  why're  you  lazying  with  that  lamp  ?  " 

"  In  a  moment,  Gran'fer." 

She  brought  it  in,  its  fat  globe  shedding  a  rosy  glow  over  the 
dingy  wall-paper,  the  squat  chairs,  and  the  china  shepherdesses. 
But  for  herself  she  had  no  need  of  it.  Everything  seemed  to  her 
transfigured,  steeped  in  a  heavenly  light. 

"  Where's  that  beer  ?  "  the  ancient  roared,  its  absence  illu- 
mined. 

She  was  glad  to  escape  into  the  kitchen  with  her  jug.  Will 
moved  towards  the  front  door. 

"  You  come  and  see  the  coach,  Mr.  Quarles,"  he  persisted, 
"  before  it's  too  dark." 

"  Dang  your  coach  !  "  But  the  imprecation  was  mild  and  the 
ancient  shuffled  to  the  door  and  surveyed  the  imposing  equipage 
complete  from  box  to  boot,  with  its  glossy  sable  steeds.  Will, 
swelling  with  renewed  pride,  and  mentally  comparing  it  with  the 
canvas-rotted,  lumbering  little  carrier's  cart  and  the  aged  animal 
on  its  last  legs,  awaited  with  complacency  the  rapturous  exclama- 
tions of  the  old  connoisseur. 

But  they  did  not  come.  "  x^y,  quite  soizable,  not  such  a  bad 
coach,  rayther  top-heavy.     Where's  the  leaders  ?  " 

"  You  don't  want  more  than  two  horses  on  these  roads.     Ain't 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  34S 

there  plenty  o'  pair-horse  coaches  ?  Besides  it  don't  set  up  for 
a  coach  exactly.     I'm  a  carrier  mainly  !  " 

The  old  man  winced  at  the  word. 

"  You've  called  her  the  Flynt  Flyer,"  he  said,  peering  at  the 
painted  legend. 

"  And  fly  she  does  I  "  said  Will,  recovering  his  complacency. 
"  There's  life  and  spirit  for  you  !  "  he  added,  as  the  horses  pawed 
and  tossed  their  heads. 

"  More  like  an  adder  biting  their  heels  !  "  said  Daniel  balefully. 
"  But  Oi  thought  Oi  heerd  they  was  black  !  " 

Will  was  outraged.     "  The  Devil  himself  couldn't  be  blacker  !  " 

Daniel  shook  his  head.  "  Mud-colour  Oi  should  call  the  offside 
hoss." 

"  Well,  there's  black  mud,  ain't  there  ?  " 

"  Nearside  hoss  seems  wheezy,"  Daniel  said  sympathetically, 
as  it  snorted  with  impatience. 

"  Wheezy  ?  Cherry-blossom  ?  Why,  he  could  run  ten  miles 
more  without  turning  a  hair." 

"  Why,  he's  sweatin'  like  one  o'clock  !  " 

"  So  am  I."  Will  wiped  his  forehead  furiously.  "  But  that's 
only  the  weather." 

"  Hosses  don't  want  to  sweat  when  there's  nowt  to  carry." 

For  a  moment  Will  was  knocked  breathless.  Recovering,  he 
smiled  complacently.  "  Why,  it's  all  delivered.  And  it  was  a 
deliverance.  .  A  terrible  load.     Phew  !  " 

"  Nothing  to  ours  !  Lord,  what  a  mort  o'  custom  I  Look  at 
that  whopping  box  we've  just  carried  in."  He  pointed  to  the 
ante-room.  "  And  all  they  other  boxes  1  "  he  added  with  an 
inspiration,  staring  at  the  lumber  of  his  deceased  and  scattered 
family. 

"  Oh,  I  know,"  Will  conceded  graciously,  "  that  there  are  folks 
that  stick  to^  Jinny — I  mean  to  you — for  old  sake's  sake." 

"  Ay,  and  you're  hankerin'  arter  our  hundred  years'  con- 
nexion !  " 

"  Eh  \  "  said  Will,  dazed.  He  stole  a  reassuring  glance  at  his 
magnificent  turn-out. 

"  Oi  could  see  what  ye  were  droivin'  at  v/ith  your  friendly 
proposition.     Want  us  to  take  you  into  pardnership." 

Will  slapped  his  knee.     "  Well,  I'mx  danged." 

Daniel  chuckled  fatuously.  "  Ho,  ho  1  Guessed  it,  did  Oi  ? 
Ye  can't  keep  much  from  Daniel  Quarles."     And  in  high  good 


346  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

humour  he  laid  his  hand  on  the  young  man's  shoulder  and  moved 
him  back  into  the  house. 

They  found  Jinny,  who  had  just  deposited  the  beer-jug  on  the 
table,  flitting  up  the  stairs. 

"  Where  ye  gooin'.  Jinny  ?  "  the  Gaffer  called  after  her. 

"  You've  got  things  to  talk  over,"  she  called  back. 

"  It  ain't  secrets,"  he  crowed. 

"  Don't  run  away,"  Will  added.  "  You're  the  person  most 
concerned." 

But  his  blushing  rival  had  disappeared.  It  was  all  too  un- 
nerving, especially  when  the  cracked  mirror,  aided  by  the  fat 
lamp,  showed  her  what  a  shabby  unkempt  figure  was  setting  out 
the  beer-glasses  on  the  tiger-painted  tray.  As  she  could  not 
change  into  her  grand  gown  under  the  invader's  eye,  she  was 
furtively  carrying  it  up  to  her  grandfather's  bedroom. 

VIII 

"  Set  ye  down,"  repeated  the  Gaffer.     "  Have  a  glass  o'  beer." 

"  No,  thank  you,  I've  had  water." 

"  And  the  glass  too,"  the  old  man  chuckled.  '*  That  ain't 
much  of  a  chate.     Have  a  shiver  o'  cake." 

Will  did  not  like  to  refuse  the  slice  till  the  Gaffer,  after  looking 
round  with  growing  grumpiness,  brought  in  the  great  wedding- 
cake  from  the  kitchen,  naked  of  its  carton. 

"  Muddlin'  things  away,"  he  was  murmuring,  as  he  posed  it 
pompously  on  the  table,  whence  its  high-built  glory  of  frosted 
sugar  shed  a  festal  air  over  the  room. 

"  No,  thank  you  1  "  cried  Will  hastily,  divining  a  mistake — 
on  the  Gaffer's  part,  if  not  on  Jinny's.  He  guessed  Farmer  Gale 
was  concerned  with  it,  for  the  whole  countryside  was  agog  with  the 
meanness  of  a  wedding  that  did  not  include  a  labourers'  supper, 
nay,  even  a  holiday  for  them.  The  old  man  glared,  bread-knife 
in  hand. 

"  It  would  give  me  stomach-ache,"  Will  apologized. 

The  confession  arrested  the  ancient.  "  Never  had  gullion  in 
my  life,"  he  bragged,  laying  down  the  bread-knife.  "  But  you 
young  folks !  " 

"  It's  Hke  this,"  said  Will,  taking  advantage  of  this  better 
mood.  "  There's  not  enough  business  to  keep  both  of  us  going. 
Suppose  I  buy  you  out." 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  347 

"  Buy  me  out !  "  The  prophet  of  wrath  resurged.  His  arm 
shot  out  for  the  bread-knife,  pointing  it  doorward.  "  Git  out 
o'  my  house.     For  a  hundred  year " 

Will  got  angry.  "  If  I  do  get  out,  it  will  be  a  hundred  years 
before  I  come  back.  However,"  he  said,  forcing  a  smile,  "  let's 
put  it  another  way.     Jinny  shall  come  and  help  my  business." 

"  Jinny'U  never  give  up  Methusalem." 

"  Well,  Methusalem'll  give  up  Jinny  before  very  long — he 
can't  last  for  ever.  And  she  can  keep  him  for  Sundays — yes, 
that'll  be  a  good  idea.  She  can  drive  to  chapel  with  him,  not 
being  a  business  animal."  "And  then  she'd  be  clear  of  suc- 
cessors to  Farmer  Gale,"  a  side-thought  added. 

"  But  Oi  thought  'twas  me  you  had  a  proposition  for,"  said 
the  Gaffer  testily. 

Will  hastily  readjusted  his  tactics.  "  Of  course,  of  course. 
It's  really  lumping  our  businesses,  instead  of  competing,  don't 
you  see  ?  " 

"  Well,  dedn't  Oi  say  'twas  a  pardnership  you  was  arter  :  " 

"  Quite  right.  Only  we'll  give  poor  old  Methusalem  a  retiring 
pension." 

"  He,  he  !  "  croaked  the  Gaffer.  He  added  honestly,  "  But  Oi 
don't  droive  much  meself  nowadays.  'Tis  onny  the  connexion 
ye'd  be  getting  and  the  adwice  and  counsel." 

"  Just  w^hat  I  want,"  said  Will  enthusiastically.  "  And  I'm 
willing  to  share  and  share  alike." 

"  Snacks  ?  " 

"  Snacks  1 " 

"  It's  not  a  bad  notion,"  admitted  the  ancient. 

"  It's  a  ripping  notion." 

"  Arter  all,  as  you  say,  there's  no  reason  we  should  come  into 
colloosion."  He  dropped  the  knife  back  on  the  table,  and  looked 
out  of  the  still  open  window. 

"  Ay,  it's  a  grand  coach !  "  he  gurgled. 

"  The  talk  of  the  countryside — only  needs  a  turnpike  road  to 
beat  the  train  !  "  said  Will,  expanding  afresh.  "  Snowdrop  and 
Cherry-blossom  I  call  these  horses  for  fun — because  they're  so 
black,  you  see." 

"  Ay,  black  as  the  devil !  And  hark  at  'em  pawin' — there's 
fire  and  sperrit  for  you.  That's  as  foine  a  coach  as  ever  Oi  took 
up  from.  It'll  not  look  amiss  with  Quarles  painted  'stead  o' 
Flynt." 


348  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Will  quickly.  "  Flynt  must 
remain.     The  Flynt  Flyer — you  can't  alter  that." 

"  Why  can't  you  ?  "  ' 

"  You  can't  say  the  Quarles  Flyer — the  Quarles  Creeper  runs 
better  off  the  tongue.     The  Flynt  Flyer — that  goes  together." 

"  But  it's  you  and  me's  got  to  goo  together,"  retorted  the 
obstinate  old  man.  "  xA^nvways  it  must  be  the  Quarles  and 
Flynt  Flyer." 

"  That's  too  long.  Besides  the  Flynt  Flyer's  become  a  trade- 
mark— known  everywhere." 

"  And  what  about  Daniel  Quarles,  Carrier  ?  That's  a  better 
known  trade-mark.     We'll  paint  that." 

Will  shook  his  head.  "  I  can't  do  that,  but  I'll  paint  Flynt 
and  Quarles,  Carriers,  underneath  the  name  of  the  coach.  And 
that's  the  limit." 

"  Daniel  Quarles  w^as  always  a  peaceable  man.  .  .  .  Quarles 
and  Flynt !  "  breathed  the  Gaffer  beatifically. 

"  No,  Flynt  and  Quarles,"  Will  corrected.  "  Flynt  must  go 
first." 

"Why  must?" 

"Don't  F  come  before  Q  ?  Folks  would  think  we  didn't 
know  our  A  B  C." 

"It  would  be  more  scholardy,"  Daniel  admitted. 

Will  proffered  a  conclusive  hand.  "  Then  it's  a  bargain  !  " 
But  Daniel  let  the  hand  hover. 

"  Oi  don't  droive  much  meself  nowadays,"  he  repeated  with 
anxious  honesty. 

"  We  don't  expect  it  of  the  head  of  the  firm,"  said  Will  grandly  ; 
"  there's  substitutes  and  subordinates."  But  his  hand  drooped 
with  a  sense  of  bathos. 

"  Ay,"  said  the  old  man,  swelling,  "  subordinators  and  grand- 
darters."     He  fished  for  the  hand. 

"  Oughtn't  we  to  let  'em  know  ?  "  Will  insinuated. 

"  Oi  alius  liked  young  Flynt,  your  father,"  answered  the 
Gaffer,  squeezing  his  fingers  heartily.  "  And  there  warn't  much 
amiss  with  your  mother.  A  forthright  family,  aldoe  Peculiar. 
Jinny  droives  a-Sundays  to  chapel  with  the  buoy-oys  !  " 

At  which  sudden  failure — or  rather  resurgence — of  memory, 
Will  felt  more  urgently  than  ever  the  need  of  getting  Jinny's 
consent  rather  than  the  nonagenarian's. 

"  You're  mighty  lucky,"  he  said  craftily,  "  to  have  a  grand- 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  349 

daughter  so  spry.  I  reckon  we'd  better  have  her  down  and  tell 
her." 

"  Ay,  that  Oi  be,"  repHed  the  Gaffer.  "  'Tis  heartenin'  to 
hear  her  singin'  up  and  down  the  house." 

Indeed  a  Httle  silvery  trill  was  reaching  them  now.  To  Will  it 
recalled  more  than  one  moment  of  mockery,  but  he  felt  nothing 
provocative  in  this  song  except  its  parade  of  happiness.  It 
seemed  to  fling  back  his  compassion,  to  be  ominous  of  a  refusal 
of  his  proposition.  Perhaps,  on  second  thoughts,  it  might  be 
better  to  leave  the  old  man  to  present  her  with  a  finished  fact. 

'^  Well,  I  must  be  getting  home,"  he  said.  "  Glad  that's 
settled." 

Daniel  clutched  the  knife  again.  "  And  we'll  cut  the  cake 
upon  it." 

"  No,  no."  Mistake  or  no  mistake,  it  seemed  sacrilegious  to 
slice  into  this  quasi-ecclesiastical  magnificence. 

"  But  it's  a  bargain.     Jinny  shall  cut  it.     Jinny  !  "  he  called  up. 

"  Just  coming,  Gran'fer." 

"  That's  too  grand  for  a  bargain,"  Will  remonstrated.  "  Would 
almost  do  for  a  v^edding,"  he  added  with  sly  malice. 

*'  Well,  ain't  this  for  a  pardnership  ?  "  the  old  man  cackled. 
He  moved  to  the  door  and  stood  looking  out  on  the  horses. 
"  Steady,  my  beauties,"  he  said  proprietorially.  He  shuffled  to 
them  and  rubbed  a  voluptuous  hand  along  the  satiny  sheen  of 
their  skins.     "  Flynt  and  Quarles,"  he  murmured. 

Will  had  taken  the  opportunity  to  escape  from  the  house.  He 
now  prepared  to  light  his  lamps.  Bats  were  swooping  and 
darting,  weaving  their  weird  patterns,  but  the  air  was  still 
uncooled. 

"  Ye' re  not  a-gooin'  afore  the  cake's  cut !  "  the  Gaffer  pro- 
tested. 

"  I'd  best  not  see  Jinny — she  might  only  fly  at  m.e." 

"  Rubbidge.     When  we've  made  it  up  1  " 

'^  But  I'm  late,  and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  there's  a  thunder- 
storm." 

"  Won't  take  half  a  jiffy  !  "  He  dashed  into  the  house  and 
seized  the  knife.  Will  was  only  in  time  to  arrest  his  uplifted 
arm,  and  Jinny,  descending  on  the  tableau,  had  a  tragi-comic 
sense  of  rushing  betwixt  a  murderer  and  her  lover. 

"  What  are  you  doing,  Gran'fer  ?  "  she  gasped. 

He  surrendered  the  bread-knife  blinkingly  to  her,  and  Will 


350  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

released  his  arm,  struck  breathless  by  the  change  in  Jinny.  Not 
only  were  apron  and  shabby  gown  replaced  by  the  Gentry 
masterpiece,  not  only  was  her  hair  combed  and  braided  in  a 
style  he  had  never  seen,  but  the  face  which  reduced  all  these 
fripperies  to  insignificance  seemed  years  younger  and  fresher. 
The  little  lines  were  gone  from  the  forehead,  the  hard  defiance 
from  the  eyes,  and  the  wanness  from  the  cheeks  :  the  whole  face 
was  mantled  with  a  soft  light.  How  shrewd  he  had  been  to 
suggest  this  partnership,  he  thought  mth  a  pleasant  glow,  for- 
getting its  origin  in  pity.  For  assuredly  this  softly  radiant 
person  made  no  call  on  that  emotion.  The  old  man  was  equally 
astonished,  "  Why,  Jinny,  ye're  as  smart  as  a  carrot !  "  he  cried 
naively.  "  Bless  ye."  He  kissed  her  fondly.  "  Willie  wants  to 
goo  into  pardnership — Quarles  and  Flynt." 

The  young  people  looked  at  each  other,  both  as  carrots  in  hue. 

"  Well,  Willie,  where' s  your  tongue  ?  Tell  her  how  we've 
settled  it." 

"  He  can  tell  me  on  Sunday,"  said  Jinny,  not  utterly  unre- 
sentful  of  their  masculine  methods. 

"  On  Sunday  ?  "  the  Gaflfer  gasped. 

"  After  chapel,"  Jinny  explained. 

"  Oi  v/on't  have  no  such  talk  a-Sundays.  It's  got  to  be  now. 
Goo  ahead,  buoy-oy  I  " 

"  Oh,  Gran'fer,"  Jinny  pleaded.  "  Can't  you  go  and  light 
Will's  lamps  ?  "  ' 

"  Ye  want  to  upset  it  all  behind  my  back,"  he  said  with  a 
cunning  air. 

"  No,  I  don't." 

"  Ye  can't  diddle  Daniel  Quarles.  It's  a  fust-rate  proposition, 
and  don't  ye  dare  say  '  Noa.'  " 

"  But,  Gran'fer  !  "  Jinny  hung  her  head.  "  You  might  under- 
stand." 

"  Oi  understand  better  nor  you.  Look  at  that  coach  now — a 
grand  coach — Quarles  and  Flynt." 

"  Never  mind  the  coach — flight  the  lamps,"  Jinny  cried 
paradoxically. 

Daniel  moved  out  reluctantly.  "  It's  a  hansum  proposition, 
Jinny,"  he  said.     "  Where's  your  tinder-box,  Willie  ?  " 

"  Here's  matches,"  said  Will.  He  looked  uneasy.  Her  grand- 
father seemed  to  be  irritating  the  girl — it  boded  ill  for  his 
proposition. 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  351 

"  Don't  be  af eared,  Willie.  She  won't  fly  at  ye  now.  Easy, 
my  beauties.     Steady,  Snowdrop  I  " 

IX 

"  You  don't  mind  my  clearing  up,"  said  Jinny,  pouncing  upon 
Farmer  Gale's  imperilled  cake. 

"  Not  if  you  don't  fly  at  me,"  Will  quoted  with  a  nervous 
facetiousness. 

Jinny  smiled  with  equal  nervousness  :  "  Oh,  I  won't  fly  at 
you — nor  jump  at  you,  neither." 

Will  flinched.  Had  he  not  felt  committed  to  her  grandfather, 
he  would  have  shrunk  from  the  rebuff  now  menacing  his  proposi- 
tion. Indeed,  he  was  not  quite  clear  as  to  how  he  could  really 
amalgamate  the  two  concerns.  The  notion  of  a  girl  guard,  which 
had  first  flashed  upon  him  as  an  inspiration,  was  now  felt  to  be 
beset  by  obstacles.  True,  the  operations  of  blowdng  such  a  long 
horn,  taking  so  many  fares,  booking  so  many  parcels,  and  locking 
and  unlocking  the  boots,  were  a  serious  discount  from  the 
pleasures  of  driving,  and  a  person  famiHar  with  the  minutiae  of 
carrying,  and  a  ready-reckoner  incarnate,  (and  so  agreeably 
incarnate)  might  well  seem  providential.  But  would  the  unfit- 
ness of  so  unconventional  an  occupation  be  glossed  over  by  the 
existing  acceptance  of  her  in  that  line  of  business,  and  would 
his  overlordship  be  a  protection  or  an  added  scandal  ?  Still,  he 
was  in  for  it  now,  unless  she  refused  the  post — which  he  hoped 
she  would  not  1  For  after  all,  at  the  worst,  with  all  these  new 
circuits  of  his,  he  might  still  leave  to  her  her  little  pottering  round, 
counting  it  as  a  branch  of  the  new  Flynt  and  Quarles  business. 
He  would  still  have  won  the  monopoly  of  the  local  carrying,  and 
without  the  weight  on  his  conscience  of  starving  her  out. 

"  I  know  you've  got  a  deal  of  pride  and  all  that,"  he  began 
diffidently,  "  but  you'll  bear  in  mind  your  grandfather's  tickled 
with  the  notion." 

"  It's  hardly  Gran'fer's  business,"  Jinny  murmured,  blushing. 

"  Oh,  I  quite  understand  that.  Of  course  it's  your  business 
really.  Didn't  I  ask  you  not  to  run  away  ?  I  didn't  mean  to 
reckon  it  settled  unless  you  said  '  Yes.'  " 

"  I  should  hope  not,"  said  Jinny  with  a  spirit  that  banished 
the  blush.  She  carried  the  cake  back  to  the  top  of  the  chest  of 
drawers. 


352  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Of  course  it's  silly  our  going  on  separate,  don't  you  think 
so?" 

"  I  haven't  thought."  She  took  up  the  beer-jug  to  re- 
move it. 

"  Well,  I  have — I've  thought  a  good  deal — that's^why  I  figured 
that  with  you  as  my  partner —     No,  not  for  me,  thank  you." 

For  Jinny  was  mechanically  filling  a  glass.  Flushing  afresh, 
she  poured  the  beer  back.  "  But  who's  to  look  after  Gran'fer  ?  " 
she  said,  her  eyes  averted.     "  How  can  I  leave  him  ?  " 

"  I've  thought  of  that — naturally  w^hen  you're  so  much  with 
me,  you  can't  be  much  with  him.  But,  you  see,  there'll  be 
plenty  of  dollars  to  share  out — money,  I  mean — and  we'd  be 
able  to  get  in  a  woman  to  take  care  of  him." 

To  get  in  a  woman  !  So  he  was  prepared  to  let  poor  old 
Gran'fer  live  v/ith  them  !  O  exquisite,  incredible  magnanimity  ! 
It  solved  all  difficulties  in  a  flash.  "  And  what  about  Methu- 
salem  ?  "  she  asked,  expectant  of  a  similarly  sublime  solution. 

"  Poor  old  Methusalem  !  "  he  laughed.  "  Won't  he  like  going 
to  grass  ?  Well,  if  he's  so  very  keen,  suppose  he  trots  around 
once  a  week  on  his  own  little  affairs — hair-restorers  and  the 
like." 

Even  the  little  dart  failed  to  pierce.  She  was  overwhelmed  by 
this  culminating  magnanimity.  This  was  indeed  surrender.  So 
she  was  not  ignorant  of  horses,  so  her  work  had  not  been  improper. 
She  smiled  responsively,  but  her  voice  shook.  "  You  mean  I 
can  carry  on  ?  " 

"  Under  the  Flynt  flag,  of  course." 

"  You  wouldn't  really  mind  ?  " 

"  All's  grist  that  comes  to  the  mill.  Besides,  it  would  leave 
me  free  to  branch  out  to  Totfield  Major,  and  perhaps  even 
Colchester.     Tuesdays,  say,  if  you  like." 

But  she  did  not  like.  Her  conception  of  a  wife's  dignity 
boggled  at  the  notion  of  driving  around  as  before.  Unmaidenly 
it  was  not — ^he  had  handsomely  admitted  it — but  unwifely  it 
assuredly  was.  A  wife's  place,  she  felt  instinctively,  was  the 
home.  She  shook  her  head.  "  I  don't  think  I  ought  to  drive 
Methusalem  any  more." 

He  gasped.  "  Well,  you  wouldn't  expect  to  handle  a  f^air  of 
horses,  would  you  ?  " 

If  he  meant  she  could  not.  Jinny  was  not  so  sure.  But  why 
argue  so  irrelevant  a  point  I     "  No,  of  course  not,"  she  mur- 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  353 

mured  obediently.  "  I  mean  Methusalem  will  like  going  out  to 
grass." 

He  breathed  freely  again.     The  path  to  his  project  was  clear 

at  last.     "  But  as  a  sort  of  guard  now "  he  ventured,  with 

an  indulgent  air. 

Jinny  beamed  at  so  facetious  a  picture.  She  saw  herself  in 
red,  with  big  buttons  and  shorn  hair.  "  So  I'm  to  blow  your 
horn  for  you  after  all !  " 

"  Sure — once  you've  paid  up  the  gloves  !  " 

She  laughed  merrily.  Even  Miss  Gentry's  bill  was  a  dissipated 
nightmare  now. 

"  But  where  shall  I  get  the  money  ?  "  she  joked,  for  the  pleasure 
of  his  reply. 

"  Oh,  you'll  take  all  the  money,"  he  instructed  her  seriously. 

"  I'll    have    to    allow    you   some,   though,"    she   pointed   out 

gaily. 

"  Half,"  he  explained.  "  We  divide  the  takings  equally — 
that's  my  proposition.     Snacks  !" 

"  Oh,  that's  much  too  much,"  she  protested  as  seriously. 

The  apparent  admission  pleased  him,  but  increased  his  sense 
of  magnanimity.  "  Share  and  share  alike,"  he  repeated  magni- 
ficently. 

"  But  you  don't  want  to  spend  half  the  takings,"  Jinny  per- 
sisted.    "  How  could  I  manage  on  a  half  ?  " 

"  Why,  you'll  have  much  more  than  you  ever  had  !  " 

Jinny  was  mystified.  "  But  there'll  be  the  house  to  keep  up 
and — and "     She  paused  with  shy  flaming  cheeks. 

Will  was  getting  a  bit  puzzled  too.  "  And  your  grandfather  ? 
But  I've  already  offered  to  pay  for  him  and  his  minder  too — out 
of  the  joint  takings,  I  mean.  Surely  half  and  half  is  the  most 
you  can  expect." 

But  it  showed  once  more  how  little  our  Jinny  had  really  been 
changed  from  early-Victorian  womanhood  by  her  exceptional 
experiences,  that  so  unconventional  a  system  of  joint  house- 
keeping made  no  appeal  to  her,  "  A  quarter  is  the  most  you  can 
expect,"  she  retorted. 

"  What  1  "  Will  was  even  more  revolted  by  her  ingratitude 
than  by  her  impudence.  "  When  you  only  bring  in  your  wretched 
little  cart,  and  I  sank  all  my  capital  in  the  coach ! " 

"  Your  capital  ?  "  Jinny  repeated  blankly. 

"  You  know  what  I  had  to  pay  for  the  horses  !  " 


354  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

It  was  an  unfortunate  memory  to  stir  up,  and  it  helped  a 
flood  of  raw  light  to  burst  upon  her. 

"  You're  not  really  proposing  I  should  be  your  guard  ?  "  she 
asked  in  a  changed  voice. 

"  Yes,  I  am,"  he  reassured  her. 

"  For  money  ?  "  she  breathed  incredulously. 

"  Of  course.  You  don't  suppose  I  ask  it  for  love  !  Business 
is !  " 

Jinny  turned  on  him  like  a  tigress — anger  was  the  only  thing 
that  could  drown  this  dreadful  sense  of  shame.  "  How  dare 
you  ?  "  she  cried.  "  How  dare  you  ask  me  to  work  for  you 
for  money  ?  " 

Will  winced  before  her  passion.  "  You  promised  not  to  fly  at 
me,"  he  reminded  her  glumly. 

"  I  didn't  think  you'd  suggest  that." 

"  And  what's  wrong  in  suggesting  a  partnership  ?  " 

"  A  partnership  !  "  she  sneered.  "  Do  you  suppose  I'm  going 
to  pull  you  out  of  the  mud  ?  " 

Will's  bldod  was  up  in  its  turn.     "  You  pull  me  ?  " 

"  What  else  ?  You  find  yourself  stuck  and  you  come  to  me 
to  save  your  funeral  coach." 

"  Funeral  coach  ?  " 

"  That's  what  Gran'fer  calls  'it.  And  you  will  find  yourself 
carrying  corpses  if  you  go  on  cooping  up  your  passengers  in  this 
weather.  Your  silly  concern  hasn't  got  a  tilt  to  take  off,  but  at 
least  you  might  put  the  luggage  inside  and  the  live-stock  on  top. 
Oh,  don't  be  frightened,  I  won't  charge  for  my  advice.  But  you 
being  young  and  raw-- — " 

"  Here  !  Stow  that !  "  Will  banged  the  floor  with  his  whip. 
"  Then  you  refuse  my  offer  !  " 

"  Offer  ?     I  call  it  a  petition." 

"  Me  petitioning !  "     His  breath  failed. 

"  It  wasn't  me  that  came  with  a  flag  of  truce." 

He  snorted.     "  You'll  come  one  day  with  a  cry  for  mercy." 

"  Me  !  You'll  never  see  me  at  Frog  Farm.  I'd  rather  go  to 
the  poorhouse — to  see  you,  I  mean." 

Will  set  his  teeth.  "  Very  well  then — my  conscience  is  clear. 
I  did  think  I  might  have  been  hard  on  you.     But  now !  " 

"  Now,"  she  echoed  mockingly. 

"  I  shall  crush  you." 

She  laughed  tauntingly      "  Pride  goes  before  a  fall." 


TWO  OF  A  TRADE  355 

"  I  shall  crush  you  without  pity." 

"  You  young  rapscallion  !  "  It  was  the  Gaffer  hobbling  back. 
Having  lit  the  coach-lamps,  he  had  lingered  in  voluptuous  con- 
templation of  what  they  illumined.  But  the  noise  of  high  words 
had  reached  him,  and  now  with  the  astonishing  muscularity  that 
still  lingered  in  his  shrunken  frame,  the  ancient  seized  the  whip 
and  wrenched  it  from  Will's  grasp.  Jinny  flew  between  them, 
fearing  he  would  strike  as  he  stood  there  in  prophetic  fury, 
palpitating  in  his  every  limb.  Her  earlier  intervention,  though 
against  a  knife,  had  been  comic  :   here  v/as  tragedy,  she  felt. 

"  You  crush  my  Jinny  !  Why,  Oi'll  snap  ye  in  two  like  this 
whip."     And  he  hurled  the  pieces  of  the  stock  at  Will's  feet. 

Nip  leapt  for  the  butt-end  and  brought  it  back  in  his  mouth 
with  high-wagging  tail,  demanding  another  throw.  He  broke 
the  tension  of  foolish'  mortality. 

"  Don't  excite  yourself,  Gran'fer,"  said  Jinny,  leading  him  to 
his  chair.     "  I'll  cut  him  out  before  he's  a  month  older." 

Will  guffawed.  "  I  offered  her  a  fair  chance,  Mr.  Quarles,"  he 
said,  taking  the  butt  from  Nip's  mouth.  "  You  .yourself  said  it 
was  a  handsome  offer." 

"  We  don't  vv^ant  your  offers,  ye  pirate  thief,  nor  your  chances 
neither.  Ye've  only  got  our  crumbles.  Oi've  sent  a  mort  o' 
customers  to  hell,  and  you  can  goo  with  'em." 

"  As  you  please."  Will  picked  up  the  whip-end  quietly.  But 
the  old  volcano  was  stiU  rumbling. 

"  You  crush  my  Jinny — you  with  your  flags  and  rags.  Why, 
all  Bradmarsh  'ould  give  ye  rough  music.     Ye'd  be  tin-kettled." 

"  Very  well !  Only  don't  say  I  didn't  give  you  a  fair  and 
friendly  chance.     Don't  blame  me  if  you  come  to  want  bread.'^ 

"  Bread  !  "  The  old  man  sprang  towards  the  chest  of  drawers 
and  this  time  the  cake  was  stabbed  to  the  heart.  "  Have  a 
shiver  ?  "  he  cried  magnificently,  holding  up  a  regal  hunk  on  the 
knife-point. 

Even  Will  was  taken  aback  by  this  deed  of  derring-do.  "  Better 
save  it  up,"  he  said  sullenly. 

"  Save  it  ?  "  repeated  Daniel  hysterically.  Nip  was  already 
on  his  liind  legs  begging  for  it — with  a  superb  gesture  the  prodigal 
grandfather  threw  it  at  the  tireless  mouth.  "  Never  you  darken 
my  doorstep  again  !  "  he  cried  to  WiU. 

Will  cracked  his  bit  of  whip  with  a  scornful  laugh.  "  Before 
you  see  me  in  this  house  again,  you'll  have  to  carry  me  in  !  " 


356  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Carry  him  in  ?  D'ye  hear  that,  Nip  ?  "  The  ancient 
chuckled  contemptuously.     "  That's  a  good  'un." 

"  Carry  me  in,"  repeated  Will  fiercely.  And  holding  up  his 
hand,  "  So  help  me  God  !  "  he  cried. 

"  Spare  your  swearings,  buoy-oy,"  said  Daniel  grimly,  throw- 
ing the  plaintive  Nip  another  pile  of  sugary  splendour.  "  Ye 
'ont  never  cross  this  threshold  agen  save  on  your  hands  and 
knees."  And  sending  his  knife  quivering  into  the  floor,  he  brought 
down  his  hand  on  his  Bible.  "  On  your  hands  and  knees,"  he 
repeated  solemnly. 

Will  turned  and  strode  out  stiffly.  He  looked  almost  tall.  A 
moment  later  they  heard  the  clatter  and  jingle  of  the  great 
equipage  moving  forwards  and  the  jubilant  winding  of  the  long 
horn. 


CHAPTER  X 

HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE 

Then  lay  my  tottering  legs  so  lozv 
•*'  l^hat  have  run  very  far ^ 
0\r  hedges  and  oi^er  ditches, 

O^er  turnpike  gate  and  bar, 
Poor  old  horse  !     Poor  old  horse  I 

Somerset  Song. 


Normally  the  nonagenarian  preserved  scant  memory  of  the 
happenings  of  the  present,  vivid  though  his  youthful  recollections 
were:  But  the  great  wedding-cake,  served  up  at  every  meal  for 
days,  co-operated  with  the  intensity  of  the  scene  to  stamp  his 
quarrel  with  Will  upon  his  feebly  registering  brain.  Especially 
did  Nip's  standing  supplication  for  his  quota  revive  and  deepen 
the  impression.  "  On  your  hands  and  knees  !  "  he  would  cry 
savagely,  as  he  threw  the  lucky  dog  a  luscious  morsel.  And 
even  v/hen  Nip  was  absent  at  meal-times — as  his  mistress  con- 
trived more  than  once,  in  her  anxiety  to  pamper  neither  him  nor 
her  grandfather's  resentment — the  old  man  would  growl  grimly : 
"  Carry  him  in !  "  Aching  enough  at  heart  from  her  own 
quarrel  with  Will,  she  had  the  wretched  feeling  that  if  by  some 
impossibility  she  and  her  rival  could  ever  again  come  together, 
the  grotesque  oaths  of  these  two  obstinate  males  would  keep  the 
family  breach  unhealed. 

But  sentiment  cannot  retain  its  acuteness  under  business 
worries  and  carking  household  cares.  The  rich  cake  eaten 
through  so  monotonously  became  to  Jinny  a  sort  of  ironic 
symbol  of  the  declining  fortunes  of  Blackwater  Hall.  It  contri- 
buted indeed  no  little  to  the  decay  of  the  old  business,  not 
merely  by  the  great  sum  that  had  to  be  paid  to  the  confectioner, 
but  through  the  loss  of  the  considerable  customer  whose  hymeneal 


358  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

festivities  its  absence  overgloomed.  Marie 'Antoinette's  advice 
to  the  starving  to  eat  cake  did  not  come  into  the  Spelling-Book, 
otherwise  Jinny  might  have  reflected  how  near  they  were  come 
to  adopting  it.  Not  that  her  grandfather  had  as  yet  occasion 
to  suspect  the  bareness  of  the  larder.  Unlike  Mother  Hubbard 
he  never  went  to  the  cupboard,  the  cupboard  always  comfortably 
coming  to  him.  Moreover,  some  rabbits  shot  by  the  farmers  as 
the  falling  crops  uncovered  them,  and  presented  to  the  ancient 
by  annual  custom,  served  to  postpone  the  evil  day.  Jinny  was 
hardly  conscious  how  much  she  stinted  herself  for  his  sake,  so 
poor  w~as  her  appetite  become.  It  was  only  once — -when  passing 
the  big  Harvest  Dinner  barn  where  Farmer  Gale's  men  roared 
drunken  choruses — that  she  felt  a  craving  for  food.  This 
valuable  freedom  from  hunger  she  attributed  to  the  heat :  in 
the  winter,  she  told  herself,  she  could  always  stoke  for  the  week 
at  the  Tuesday  and  Friday  meals  so  amiably  provided  at  Mother 
Gander's.  That  worthy  lady  would  also  doubtless  refill  grand- 
father's beer-barrel  at  cost  price.  It  was  fortunate  he  did  not 
smoke  or  snuff.     Methodism  had  its  points. 

A  more  serious  problem  was  presented  by  Methusalem — 
growing  distended  by  overmuch  grass — and  even  her  goats 
coveted  an  occasional  supplement  to  the  hedgerows  and  the  oak 
scrub  if  their  milk  was  to  run  freely.  But  of  hay  or  cabbages 
her  store  was  small,  and  these  finicking  feeders,  though  they 
condescended  to  eat  horse-chestnuts,  would  not  even  accept  a 
gnawed  apple.  The  poultry,  too,  *  must  soon  be  eaten,  if  they 
could  not  be  properly  fed,  and  the  thought  of  instructing  her 
grandfather  to  twist  a  familiar  neck  made  her  blood  run  cold. 
With  such  a  varied  household  to  cater  for,  our  little  housekeeper 
began  to  envy  Maria,  who,  according  to  Mrs.  Flynt,  raised  her 
large  and  frequent  families  on  everything  and  anything  on  earth, 
rhubarb-leaves  being  the  one  and  only  pabulum  pigs  turned  up 
their  snouts  at.  It  was  not  the  least  painful  part  of  this  novel 
pinch  of  poverty  that  Jinny  felt  herself  compelled  to  forgo  those 
calls  witli  little  presents  for  the  Pennymoles,  the  Bidlakes,  and 
the  poor  and  the  bed-ridden  in  general,  with  which  she  had 
diversified  her  deliveries  :  she  did  not  realize  that  her  mere 
presence  would  have  been  a  creature  comfort. 

But  of  these  pangs  and  problems  the  v/orld  knew  naught,  hearing 
her  little  horn  making  its  gay  music  and  seeing  her  still  jauntily 
perched  on  her  driving-board  in  her  elegant  rose-pink  frock  and 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  359 

with  the  latest  fancy  whipcord  edge  to  the  straw  of  her  bonnet. 
Her  music,  indeed,  was  far  livelier  than  the  wheezy  notes  of  the 
Flynt  Flyer's  guard,  though  otherwise  the  red-coated  clodhopper 
w^ho  had  been  stuck  up  on  the  coach  a  few  days  after  its  visit 
to  Blackwater  Hall,  lent  the  last  touch  to  its  fascinations.  But 
if  passengers,  other  than  Elijah  Skindle  and  one  or  two  equally 
unbusinesslike  young  men,  w^ere  no  longer  content  to  crawl  along 
in  her  cart,  that  historic  vehicle  showed  scant  sign  of  defeat. 
Already  when  the  removal  of  the  hoops  in  the  hot  weather  had 
threatened  to  expose  too  clearly  the  nakedness  of  the  land, 
parcels  of  stones  on  the  model  of  the  swain-chaser  had  begun  to 
cumber  it  up,  and  when  one  Monday  morning  the  Flynt  Flyer 
came  swaggering  in  new^  pea-green  paint,  the  Quarles  Crawler 
turned  up  on  Tuesday  mountainous  with  the  old  boxes  and 
cypress  clothes-chests  routed  out  of  the  ante-room,  and  emptied 
of  their  litter. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  Gaffer  had  had  to  be  put  into  the 
plot.  He  had  long  since  begun  to  smell  a  rat — having  a  super- 
sense  for  his  business,  however  his  other  senses  might  fail — and 
it  \vould  have  been  impossible  to  heave  up  the  boxes  without 
him,  or  to  explain  their  removal  without  imparting  some  notion  of 
the  tragic  truth.  And  the  truth  did  not  diminish  his  resentment 
against  young  Caleb's  boy  or  his  vigilance  against  further  robbers. 
"  Carry  him  in  !  "  he  would  cackle  and  croak  as  he  bore  out  the 
emptied  "  spruce-hutches  "  to  the  cart  or  carefully  permutated 
their  positions  in  it.  Then  with  hoarse  thunder :  "  On  your  hands 
and  knees,  ye  pirate  thief  !  " 

But  these  ostentated  boxes — while  they  saved  the  pride  of  the 
Quarleses — did  but  damage  the  remainder  of  their  custom.  The 
faithful  few  had  been  held  back  by  solicitude  for  Jinny's  liveli- 
hood :  seeing  her  now  so  flourishing,  the  very  tail-board  lowered 
on  its  chains  and  groaning  under  protruding  "  portmantles,"  her 
last  clients  save  Peculiars  lapsed  in  silent  relief,  one  after  another. 
Daily,  poor  Jinny  expected  to  see  four  horses  on  the  rival  vehicle 
and  its  circuit  extended  to  Colchester.  But  that  would  have 
meant  for  Will  a  grandeur  inconsistent  with  the  petty  commis- 
sions which  he  still  deigned  to  execute  :  it  would  have  allowed 
some  of  her  old  custom  to  return  to  her.  And  he  was  sullenly 
bent  on  driving  her — literally — out  of  the  business.  But  he 
enhanced  the  dignity  of  his  profession  by  copying  from  an  old 
inn  of  the  pack-horse  days  its  signboard  of  "  The  Carriers'  Arms," 


360  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

depicting  a  rope,  a  wanty-hook,  and  five  packing  skewers.  These, 
painted  in  black  on  the  pea-green,  seemed  to  proclaim  his  formal 
annexation  and  monopoly  of  the  local  carrying  trade. 

Jinny  began  to  think  seriously  of  buying  up  from  the  barns 
some  straw  from  the  reaped  sheaves  and  competing  with  the 
cottagers  imthe  all-pervasive  plaiting  industry.  Splitting  straws 
was  no  despicable  occupation  in  the  valley  of  the  Brad,  where  it 
was  done  by  enginery,  and  provided  even  children  of  six  and 
old  men  of  eighty  with  the  opportunity  of  adding  to  the  family 
income.  Tambour-lace  and  other  things  also  entered  into  her 
thoughts.  The  only  thing  that  never  entered  into  them  was 
the  idea  of  ceasing  to  ply.  So  long  as  the  boxes  and  the  cart 
held  together,  the  Flynt  Flyer  should  always  see  the  rival 
vehicle  imperturbably  jogging.  In  every  sense  she  would 
"  carry  on." 


II 

August  was  ending  aridly.  Methusalem's  sensitive  nose  was 
protected  from  flies  by  green  bracken.  Calves  snuggled  in  the 
hot  meadows,  meditatively  chewing,  an  image  of  somnolence, 
their  tails  flicking  whitely.  Stooks  or  manure-heaps  had  reduced 
the  fields  to  geometrical  patterns.  Tall  hollyhocks  leaned 
dustily  like  ruined  towers.  Bucolic  conversation  was  of  the 
absent  rain.  Rooks  were  more  destructive  than  ever.  Swedes 
were  doing  badly  and  every  one  had  waited  to  sow  turnips,  rape, 
or  mustard.  They  had  no  fodder  even  for  winter  stock.  Master 
Peartree  began  to  worry  over  his  sheep  as  they  munched  the 
sapless  grass.  In  the  waterless  little  villages  the  ground  was 
hard  as  iron,  and  Bundock  strode  over  the  swamps  around  Frog 
Farm  as  fearlessly  as  now  frequently.  "  A  regular  doucher  " 
was  the  general  demand  upon  Providence,  though  it  was  couched 
— for  church  and  chapel — in  less  vivid  terms.  These  prayers 
enabled  Bundock  to  work  off  one  of  his  old  aphorisms,  saved  for 
a  rainless  day.  "  It's  no  use  praying  for  rain,"  he  chuckled  to 
the  countryside,  "  till  you  see  the  storm-clouds."  ''  But  you 
don't  scarce  need  to  pray  then,"  the  countryside  pointed  out,  to 
his  disgust. 

In  Jinny's  soul,  too,  there  was  drought,  and  she  seemed  to 
share  Bundock's  view  that  prayer  was  waste  of  breath.  Not 
that  her  evening  prayers  were  left  unsaid,  but  in  her  apathy  and 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  361 

weariness  no  private  plea  was  added  to  the  prescribed  form, 
though  the  Spelling-Book  commended  the  asking  for  extra  mercies, 
provided  also  one  begged  for  a  perpetual  continuance  of  the 
Protestant  Succession.  What  deliverance  could  there  be  for 
her  ?  God  Himself,  she  felt  obscurely,  could  not  help  her,  any- 
more than  she  had  ever  been  able  to  help  little  mavises  fallen 
from  their  nests  and  deserted  by  their  mothers.  Their  thrilling- 
eyed  vitality  and  exquisite  flutterings  had  only  made  her 
miserable.     But  perhaps  God  was  now  as  sorry  for  her. 

One  grown-up  mavis,  too,  she  remembered,  a  victim  to  the 
winter  battle  of  life,  the  neck  half  severed  from  the  half-plucked 
body,  the  liquid  eye  gazing  appealingly  at  her,  the  legs  stirring 
feebly  in  a  welter  of  feathers.  She  had  nerved  herself  to  grant 
its  dumb  plea  :  she  had  stamped  sharply  on  its  skull  and  seen 
its  eye  fly  out  on  the  path  like  a  bright  bead.  Could  God  do 
aught  less  drastic  for  her  ?  Not  that  she  ever  dreamed  of  dying  : 
she  must  live  on,  however  mutilated,  for  it  was  impossible  to 
conceive  her  grandfather  getting  along  without  her.  Consider 
only  his  trousers  !  How  loosely  they  were  now  flapping  round 
his  shrunken  calves,  almost  like  a  sailor's.  Soon  the  winter 
winds  would  be  piping  through  them.  Without  her  to  take  in 
a  tuck,  where  would  he  be  ?  And  who  w^ould  cut  his  hair  and 
trim  his  beard  ? 

It  was  her  grandfather  who  was  mainly  responsible  for  the  dis- 
continuance of  her  chapel  habit  on  Lord's  Day.  His  increased 
fretfulness  and  fractiousness  since  he  was  become  aware  of  the 
rival  power,  made  it  imprudent  to  leave  him  for  long  except 
unavoidably — not  to  mention  the  danger  to  herself  of  awkward 
meetings  at  chapel  with  that  rival  power — and  there  was  the 
further  difficulty  of  getting  to  Chipstone,  now  Farmer  Gale's  trap 
v/as  out  of  the  question.  But  she  was  not  without  a  nearer  place 
of  worship — for  to  the  scandal  of  the  Peculiars,  particularly 
Bundock,  she  now  began  to  attend  the  parish  church  of  Little 
Bradmarsh,  whose  emptiness  with  its  parade  of  free  seats  after 
eleven  o'clock  was  a  standing  pleasantry  in  the  spheres  of  Dissent. 
The  convenience  of  proximity  w^as  not,  however,  its  main  attrac- 
tion for  Jinny,  and  Miss  Gentry  would  have  rejoiced  less  had 
she  understood  that  a  change  of  heart  or  doctrine  or  the  mag- 
netism of  the  Reverend  Mr.  Fallow  had  as  little  to  do  with 
Jinny's  apparent  conversion ;  though  the  fact  that  Jinny  had 
never  forgotten  her  one  childish  glimpse  of  the  prayer-absorbed 


362  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

pastor  doubtless  served  to  reassure  the  girl  as  to  the  not  alto- 
gether ungodly  character  of  his  edifice. 

She  had  entered  to  cart  over  to  the  Chip  stone  hospital  some  fruit 
laid  before  the  altar  at  the  Harvest  Thanksgiving  by  the  one 
prosperous  worshipper.  For  Mr.  Fallow  was  still  an  unwavering 
client  of  hers,  almost  the  last  outside  her  own  communion,  possibly 
because  having  neither  family  nor  flock  to  distract  him  from  his 
classics,  he  had  scarcely  observed  the  coach. 

In  the  "  Speculi  Britanniae  Pars,"  in  w^hich  he  had  once  hunted 
out  her  genealogy — to  his  own  satisfaction  and  nobody's  hurt — 
Essex  was  compared  to  Palestine  for  its  flow  of  "  milke  and 
hunny."  And  "  hunny  "  was  still  her  staple  link  with  the  tall 
fusty-coated  snuff-smeared  figure,  stooping  over  his  hives  or  his 
Virgil,  both  sacredly  fused  for  him  in  the  Fourth  Georgic.  She 
marketed  his  surplus,  exchanging  it  for  firkins  of  butter  and — 0 
aberrations  of  the  godliest — canisters  of  Lundy  Foot.  And  it 
was  after  disposing  of  some  of  his  smaller  tithes — for  the  parish 
had  remained  outside  the  recent  Commutation  Act  of  1836 — 
that  Jinny  had  been  thus  led  to  set  foot  in  his  church.  There 
were  in  those  days  no  floral  decorations  to  mar  the  completeness 
with  which  the  arches  and  pillars  ministered  to  her  troubled 
mood.  The  outside  she  had  always  found  soothing,  with  its 
grey  old  stonework  and  its  lichened  tower  rising  amid  haystacks 
and  thatched  cottages  with  dormer  windows.  But  how  much 
cooler  the  peace  that  fell  upon  her,  when  she  passed  through  the 
old,  spiky,  oak  door  and  under  the  long,  wooden,  vaulted  roof  into 
a  dimness  shot  with  rich  stained  glass.  Mr.  Fallow  had  been 
one  of  the  earliest  clergymen  of  the  century  to  remove  the 
whitewash  from  the  old  painted  walls  of  his  church,  and  though 
the  royal  arms — the  Hon  and  the  unicorn — still  lingered  over  the 
chancel,  there  was  no  other  jar  In  the  spiritual  harmony  except 
the  stove,  whose  pipe  went  hideously  up  and  along  the  ceiling. 
Ignoring  that,  however,  in  the  effect  of  the  whole  and  forgetting 
everything  else,  Jinny  sank  upon  a  pew-bench  and  abandoned 
herself  to  the  unholy  influences  of  architecture,  so  restful  after 
her  chapel  with  its  benches  and  table-desk,  ugliness  unadorned. 
Not  even  a  gradual  consciousness  of  neglected  duty  could  impair 
the  divine  tranquillity. 

But  the  sober  beauty  of  the  place  might  not  have  sufficed  to 
draw  her  again,  but  for  a  strange  circumstance.  One  of  the 
stained-glass    figures,  dully  familiar  to  her  from  without  as  a 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  363 

leaden  glaze,  proved  when  seen  from  within  in  all  the  glory  of 
art  to  be  an  angel  of  the  very  type  under  which  her  childish 
vision  had  imagined  her  hovering  mother.  And  that  it  actually 
was  mystically  interfused  with  her  mother,  as  her  emotion  had 
immediately  intertwined  it,  was  demonstrated  by  the  fact  that 
even  w^hen  she  at  last  went  forward  to  gather  up  the  plum.s  and 
apples,  the  eyes  followed  her  about  in  protection  and  benediction. 
Miss  Gentry's  legend  of  her  moving  angel  lost  its  last  shade  of 
improbability,  and  it  was  with  a  new  humility  that  Jinny  repeated 
to  her  at  the  first  opportunity  her  remorse  for  the  permuted 
pot. 

Nor  did  the  angel's  emanation  of  guardianship  prove 
illusory,  for  outraged  though  Miss  Gentry  had  been  by  the 
suggestion  that  her  moustache  needed  a  hair-restorer,  she 
graciously  intimated — after  the  second  Sunday  of  Jinny's 
attendance — that  the  debt  for  the  dress  could  be  worked  off  in 
commission  charges.  It  was  a  vast  relief,  for  the  Bun  dock-borne 
rumour  of  her  apostacy  had  alienated  the  bulk  of  her  co-reli- 
gionists and  exchanged  the  lingering  remorse  of  earlier  deserters 
for  a  sense  of  rectitude  and  foresight.  Bundock's  sym.pathy 
with  the  Brotherhood  almost  reinstated  him  in  its  good  graces. 
"  But  it  brings  its  own  punishment,"  he  pointed  out  consolingly. 
"  Fancy  putting  a  parson  over  herself  to  poke  his  snuffy  nose 
into  everything.  That's  a  pretty  dress.  Jinny,  he'll  say,  is  it 
paid  for  ?  Or,  that's  a  cranky  old  grandpa  you've  got — why 
don't  ye  put  him  in  the  poorhouse  ?  " 

It  was  as  well  poor  Jinny  did  not  overhear  him,  or  she  might 
have  doubted  whether  her  load  of  boxes  was  so  uniformly  im.posing 
as  she  imagined.  The  Deacon,  who  did  hear  him,  and  who  spent 
his  life  poking  into  holes  and  reprimanding  sinners,  was  even 
more  righteously  indignant  at  the  interference  of  parsons.  "  In- 
quisitive as  warmin  in  a  larder,"  he  described  them..  "  Fussing 
around  the  poor,  but  without  a  drop  of  rum  in  their  milk  of 
human  koindness."  Mr.  Fallow — it  would  appear — had  inter- 
fered on  behalf  of  his  parishioner  in  the  threatened  lawsuit  with 
Miss  Gentry :  he  had  persuaded  the  guileless  rat-catcher  to 
promise  to  clear  her  cottage  for  nothing,  and  this  although  Mrs. 
Mott  was  paying  her  in  full  for  his  wife's  silk  dress,  the  responsi- 
bility for  which  he  had  righteously  repudiated. 

"  Oi'll  clear  her  cottage,"  he  added  darkly,  and  it  seemed  to 
Bundock  that  the  parson  had  succeeded  only  in  patching  up  the 


364  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

feud.  But  what  was  to  be  expected  of  the  canting  crew,  the 
postman  inquired.  The  new  Chipstone  curate  had  called  on  his 
father,  and  Bundock  related  with  a  chuckle  how  the  bed-ridden 
old  boy  had  patronizingly  regretted  that,  being  on  his  bade,  he 
could  do  nothing  to  help  his  visitor.  "  He  sent  him  away  with 
a  bed-flea  in  his  ear,"  gloated  Bundock.  Mr.  Joshua  Mawhood 
recalled  a  bigger  flea  in  the  same  clerical  ear.  The  hapless 
curate  had  offered  him  a  ticket  for  a  lecture  on  "  Economy." 
"  Come  with  meBradmarsh  way,"  the  rat-catcher  had  retorted, 
"  and  Oi'U  show  you  Mrs.  Pennymole's  cottage,  and  if  you'll 
show  me  how  she  can  bring  up  her  nine  childer  on  eleven  shillings 
a  week,  Oi'U  eat  your  shovel-hat."  Bundock,  unable  to  find  a 
still  larger  flea,  fell  back  on  hypothesis.  "  If  I'd  been  a  Church- 
man and  a  chap  in  a  white  choker  came  to  mine,"  he  said,  "  I'd 
tell  him  to  mind  his  own  business,  and  I  dare  say  he'd  be  insulted, 
though  I'd  be  giving  him  splendid  advice.  You  know  where  the 
door  is,  I'd  say,  for  you  didn't  come  in  by  the  chimney.     Now 

walk  out,  or  else !  "     And  carried  away  by  his  own  drama, 

Bundock  administered  a  hearty  kick  to  the  apparently  still- 
lingering  phantom.  . 

Needless  to  say,  Mr.  Fallow  exercised  none  of  this  imagined 
prying  into  Jinny's  affairs.  Like  his  pew-opener,  whose  long 
caped  coat  with  the  official  red  border  found  now  a  fresh  justifica- 
tion, he  was  only  too  glad  of  her  uninvited  attendance,  and  the 
considerable  accretion  she  brought  to  his  congregation.  Her 
presence  freshened  up  for  himself  his  old  sermons  :  for  her  sake 
he  even  put  in  new  Latin  quotations.  But  Jinny  enjoyed 
more  the  three  musicians  in  the  gallery — 'cellist,  flautist,  and 
bassoonist — whose  black  frock-coats  and  trousers  made  them  as 
important  in  quality  as  they  were  in  quantity,  and  when  after 
they  had  played  a  few  bars  the  congregation  sang  : 

^'  Awake  my  soul,  and  with  the  sun 
Thy  daily  stage  of  duty  run^'' 

Jinny  felt  herself  rapt  far  indeed  from  her  daily  stage  of  duty. 
Even  the  pew-opener  shufiling  about  in  his  list  slippers  to  poke 
up  the  stove  or  a  small  boy,  or  to  snuff  the  guttering  tallow 
candles  on  dark  mornings,  could  not  bring  her  to  earth. 

And  another  factor  than  the  church  and  its  mother-angel 
helped  Jinny  over  this  dreary  time.  This  was  her  dog.  For 
only  now  did  Nip  emerge  into  his  full  caninity,  or  at  least  only 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  365 

now  did  Jinny  learn  to  appreciate  him  to  the  full.  In  howsoever 
leaden  a  mood  she  started  her  carrying  work,  Nip's  ecstasy  soon 
tinged  it  with  gold.  His  blissful  staccato  barks,  his  tall  inflated 
tail,  his  upleapings  at  her  as  she  harnessed  Methusalem,  his 
gallopings  and  gambollings  round  that  stolid er  fellow-quadruped, 
his  crazy  friskings  and  curvetings — who  could  resist  such  joy  of 
life  ?  Often  it  seemed  to  Jinny  that  he  was  returning  thanks  to 
his  Maker  for  the  sunshine  or  the  good  smells,  rebuking  uncon- 
sciously her  heart-heaviness,  bidding  her  cry  no  more  over  spilt 
milk,  but  just  lap  up  what  she  could.  *'  Cheer  up.  Jinny  !  "  she 
heard  him  bark.  "  Men  are  brutes  and  w^omen  fools  and  gran'fers 
grumpy  and  customers  cruel,  but  life  is  jolly  and  odours  numerous 
and  where  there's  a  way  there's  a  Will."  And  infected  by  these 
sentiments  of  his,  she  would  crack  her  whip,  and  Methusalem 
would  prick  up  his  ears  and  pretend  for  her  sake  to  go  faster, 
and  there  would  be  a  lull  in  the  ache  at  her  heart. 

Nip,  however,  was  less  consoling  when  the  rival  carriers  met 
on  the  road.  Then  his  invincible  persuasion  that  the  two  were 
one  brought  Jinny  considerable  discomfort.  For  Wiil  persisted 
in  his  later  tactics  of  slowing  down,  whether  to  take  stock  of  her 
appearance  or  to  rub  in  the  odious  comparison  of  their  respective 
equipages,  so  that  while  these  were  in  proximity,  Nip  was  able 
to  feel  himself  shepherding  them,  and  he  ran  from  one  to  the 
other,  rounding  them  up.  Even  when  Jinny  manoeuvred  off 
down  the  first  by-way,  Nip,  not  to  be  baulked,  would  travel 
between  one  and  the  other,  growing  more  and  more  desperate 
as  they  grev»'  more  and  more  distant,  till  at  last,  fearful  of  losing 
both,  he  exchanged  his  frenzied  shuttling  between  them  for  a 
stiU  more  frenzied  standstill  midway  between  the  mutually 
receding  vehicles — you  saw  him  almost  literally  torn  in  two. 
Finally,  after  plaintive  ululations  of  protest,  he  would  trot  back, 
v/ith  hang-dog  look  and  drooping  tail,  to  the  shabby  cart,  where 
his  mistress  throned,  grim  and  pale,  amid  her  manifold  mock 
parcels. 

Ill 

But  it  was  neither  Mr.  Fallow's  sermons  nor  Nip's  that  gave 
Jinny  her  first  real  sense  of  religion  ;  not  even  the  bass-viol  and 
flute,  though  she  heard  them  with  ecstasy,  nor  the  collects  and 
litanies,  though  she  perused  them  with  interest.  It  came  to  her 
one  pitch-black  night  when  she  had  too  confidently  ventured  out 


366  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

to  bring  first  aid — a  jug  of  real  tea  with  some  bread  and  butter — 
to  poor  rheumatic  Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  whom  earlier  that  day,  while 
gathering  mushrooms  for  supper,  she  had  discovered  in  a  deserted 
charcoal-burner's  hut. 

She  had  not  known  before  that  Farmer  Gale  had  carried  out 
his  threat  of  evicting  the  nondescript  from  his  cottage  on  the 
plea  of  needing  it  for  a  labourer,  and  although  she  had  been 
compelled  to  suspend  the  ministrations  which  had  set  Mr.  Fallow 
looking  for  the  Lady  Bountiful  in  her  blood,  she  felt  vaguely 
responsible  for  Uncle  Lilliw^hyte's  declined  fortunes,  so  parallel  to 
her  own.  Would,  in  fact,  the  Cornishman  have  turned  him  out 
if  Jinny  had  allowed  that  all-powerful  arm  to  remain  round  her 
waist  at  the  cattle-market ;  nay,  could  she  not  have  cheered  and 
nourished  a  subject  countryside  ? 

The  unsavoury  ancient  was  lying  on  some  coarse  sacking  in  a 
clearing  still  half  charred.  Literally  "  sackcloth  and  ashes," 
Jinny  thought,  as  she  groped  her  way  along  the  glade  by  the 
twinkle  of  his  candle  through  the  chinks  of  his  ramshackle  hut. 
An  old  flintlock,  some  snares,  nets  and  rods,  and  a  cooking-pot 
seem.ed  all  its  furniture.  She  was  horrified  to  think — as  she 
gazed  at  the  gaps  in  the  roof — that  the  prayer  for  rain  might  be 
granted.  But  to  her  surprise  the  old  man  was  sharing  the 
communal  aspiration — "  a  good  rine  as'U  make  the  seeds  spear  " 
— though  not  hopeful  of  the  boon  immediately.  He  did  not 
want  to  be  a  "  wet-'ead,"  he  declared  paradoxically,  but  the 
ground  would  be  harder  before  the  sun  met  the  wind.  Such 
solicitude  on  behalf  of  soil  belonging  so  largely  to  the  farmer  who 
had  evicted  him  seemed  to  Jinny  touchingly  Christian. 

It  was  only  when  she  had  turned  her  back  on  his  glimmering 
light  and  got  into  the  thick  of  the  woods  that  they  became 
curiously  unfamiliar.  Great  trees  that  she  did  not  know  existed 
came  colliding  against  her,  tangles  of  roots  tripped  her  up  on  her 
favourite  paths  ;  she  stumbled  into  unfriendly  pricklinesses  of 
every  species.  She  seemed,  indeed,  ridiculously  lost  within  a 
furlong  of  her  own  door  :  how  this  black  labyrinth  had  got  there 
she  could  not  understand,  but  it  looked  as  if  she  might  be  all 
night  escaping  from  it.  She  was  even  uneasily  expecting  one  of 
the  snakes  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  hunted  to  glide  perversely  under 
her  feet,  she  bruising  its  head  and  it  biting  her  heel  as  the  curse 
in  Genesis  predicted.  Of  course,  if  she  could  spit  into  its  mouth 
after  chewing  some  Spanish  bugloss,  it  would  instantly  die.     So 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  367 

at  least  Miss  Gentry  had  assured  her.  But  how  find  the  rare 
bugloss  in  this  blackness,  or  how  spit  accurately  into  the  serpent's 
mouth  ? 

Why  had  she  not  brought  a  lantern,  she  asked  herself.  Was 
it  really  because  she  was  jug  and  package  laden,  or  had  it  been  only 
conceit  ?  She  asked  the  question  still  more  self-reproachfully 
when,  after  smasliing  the  empty  jag  in  a  stumble  which  left  her 
knuckles  bleeding,  she  heard  the  gurgle  of  a  water-hen  and 
realized  that  she  was  far  off  her  track  and  nearly  into  the  Brad. 
She  could  not  swim,  but  even  a  svv^immer  in  such  a  moonless, 
starless  void  would  not  see  the  shore.  Cautiously  feeling  her 
way  among  the  willows,  she  groped  towards  the  pasture-land, 
paradoxically  pleased  when  she  fell  over  a  sleeping  cow.  She 
lay  there  some  minutes  in  the  w^arm  darkness,  not  anxious  to 
move  on,  for  the  river  wound  perilously  in  and  out,  one  could 
still  hear  it  rippling  deliciously  in  the  reeds,  and  the  odours  of 
the  night  were  as  exquisite.  And  then  through  the  measureless 
blackness  a  faint  suggestion  of  grey  began  to  make  itself  per- 
ceptible or  rather  divinable,  so  shadowy  was  it,  a  lesser  shade  of 
black  rather  than  an  adumbration  of  light ;  it  was  as  if  behind 
the  blank  firmament  some  star  was  striving  to  shine. 

And  suddenly,  mystically,  she  felt  that  this  hinted  radiance 
was  God,  the  Light  behind  life's  darkness,  and  the  words  of  the 
twenty-third  Psalm  came  to  her  mind  with  all  the  force  of  a 
revelation.  "  ^he  Lord  is  my  shepherd^  I  shall  not  want.  He 
maketh  me  lie  down  in  green  pastures.  He  leadeth  me  beside  the 
still  water s,^^  How  divinely  apt  was  every  word !  So  long  as 
she  had  not  wanted  for  aught,  so  long  as  she  had  not  needed  to 
be  led,  she  had  not  really  felt  the  meaning  of  the  words :  now 
that  she  was  strayed  and  a-hungered,  she  knew  overpoweringly 
that  she  had  a  shepherd.  He  was  behind  her  watching,  as  surely 
as  she  watched  over  her  grandfather.  Now  she  understood  what 
the  Peculiars  meant  when  they  got  up  to  testify.  She  must  go 
back  to  them,  bear  witness  this  very  next  Sunday.  Mr.  Fallow's 
church  had  no  place  for  such  testimonies.  Women  could  not 
speak  even  at  Morning  Service. 

And  as  if  to  complete  her  conversion,  there  was  a  swift  patter- 
ing, a  joyous  bark,  and  a  cold  nose  in  her  fevered  palm.  She  had 
only  to  attach  her  handkerchief  to  Nip's  collar  to  be  guided 
safely  home.  But  it  was  Nip  that  was  really  her  shepherd,  she 
told  herself,  or  at  least  her  sheep-dog :    it  was  Nip  that  was 


368  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

leading  her  beside  the  still  waters.  Dog  was  after  all  only  God 
spelt  backwards,  she  thought,  with  a  sense  of  mystic  discovery. 
And  remembering  all  that  Nip  had  done  to  bring  her  back  to 
faith  in  life,  she  felt  he  was  indeed  a  divine  messenger.  But  then 
it  was  borne  in  upon  her  that  if  she  testified  her  true  thoughts, 
the  Brethren  would  deem  her  irreverent.  After  all,  it  was  Mr. 
Fallow  who  might  understand  better,  he  v/ho  spoke  of  his  bees 
with  love,  and  had  once  cited  to  her  a  passage  from  a  Roman 
poet  about  bees  being  part  of  the  divine  mind.  The  Roman 
writer  was  not  a  Catholic,  he  had  explained  carefully,  seeing  her 
dubious  face. 

IV 

In  her  gratitude  to  the  dressmaker,  Jinny  had  become  more  than 
ever  her  intellectual  parasite,  and  a  wealth  of  information  from 
"  The  Christian  Mother's  Miscellany  "  and  "  Culpeper's  Herbal " — 
to  say  nothing  of  the  spinster's  own  sibylline  rhymes — enriched 
the  walk  to  and  from  church,  which  Miss  Gentry  graciously 
permitted  her  carrier  and  debtor  to  take  in  her  society  next 
Sunday  morning.  They  parted  indeed  inside.  Miss  Gentry 
plumping  herself  unrebuked  into  the  curtained  three-benched 
pew  of  the  dead  and  gone  squire  whom  old  Farmer  Gale  had  dis- 
possessed. Jinny  was  thus  unable  to  exchange  glances  with  her 
at  the  thrilling  announcement  read  out  by  the  cleric,  who  after 
the  Second  Lesson  declared  curtly— as  if  it  were  the  most  natural 
thing  in  the  world — that  Mr.  Anthony  Flippance,  widower,  of 
Frog  Farm,  and  Miss  Bianca  Cleopatra  Jones,  spinster,  of  Fox- 
earth  Farm,  both  of  this  parish,  proposed  to  enter  into  holy 
matrimony.  At  once  a  whirligig  of  images  circled  round  Jinny 
and  she  saw  dizzily  the  explanation  of  a  disappearance  that  had 
puzzled  her,  for  Tony  had  vanished  from  "  The  Black  Sheep  " 
without  leaving  a  tip,  the  old  waiter  grumbled.  What  had  led 
up  to  this  adventure,  she  wondered,  and  how  was  Polly  taking 
her  intended  stepmother  ? 

"  Isn't  that  the  Showman  you've  spoken  of  ?  "  Miss  Gentry 
inquired,  as  the  congregation  of  seven  streamed  out,  swollen  by 
musicians,  sexton,  clerk,  and  pew-opener.  "  The  fomenter  of 
ungodliness  ?  " 

"  It  certainly  seems  my  old  customer,"  replied  Jinny,  some- 
what evasively.  "  But  I  didn't  know  he  was  living  at  Frog 
Farm." 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  369 

"  Didn't  you  tell  me  he  was  going  to  turn  your  chapel  into  a 
playhouse  ?  " 

"  So  he  said  once,  but  nothing  seems  to  have  come  of  it." 

"  More's  the  pity,"  Miss  Gentry  surprised  Jinny  by  comment- 
ing.    She  added,  "  Even  a  playhouse  would  do  less  harm." 

"  I — I  don't  see  that,"  Jinny  stammered,  protesting. 

"  It's  as  clear  as  daylight.  The  Devil  stamps  his  sign  plainly 
on  a  playhouse  :  he  forges  God's  name  on  a  chapel.  And  who 
is  this  Miss  Jones  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know.  I  never  heard  of  any  girl  at  Foxearth  Farm 
called  Cleopatrick — ^what  a  funny  name  !  " 

"  Cleopatra,"  corrected  Miss  Gentry  grandly,  her  bosom 
expanding  till  it  strained  her  Sunday  silk.  "  A  great  Queen  of 
Egypt  in  the  days  of  old.  Born  under  Venus  and  died  of  the 
bite  of  an  asp  !  " 

"  What's  an  asp  ?  "  said  Jinny. 

"  It's  what  they  call  the  serpent  of  old  Nile  !  " 

'"  Good  gracious  !  "  Jinny  exclaimed.  "  Couldn't  they  have 
given  Her  Majesty  agrimony  wine  ?  " 

"  Neither  horse-mint  nor  wild  parsnip  could  avail :  there  is  no 
ointment  against  suicide,"  Miss  Gentrv  explained.  "  She  killed 
herself." 

"  A  queen  kill  herself  1     What  for  r  " 

"  What  does  one  kill  oneself  for  ?  "  Miss  Gentry  demanded 
crushingly.  "  For  love,  of  course.  But  I  hope  her  namesake  is 
more  respectable.  Cleopatra  never  published  the  banns.  But 
how  comes  this  Miss  Jones  to  be  at  Foxearth  Farm  ?  I  thought 
the  people  were  called  Purley — hurdle-makers,  aren't  they  ?  " 

"  Yes— -it  must  be  a  lodger.  They  do  take  lodgers.  I  m.ust 
ask  Barnaby — I  meet  him  on  the  road  som.etimes."  She  stood 
still  suddenly,  going  red  and  white  by  turns  like  the  revolving 
lens  of  a  lighthouse. 

Miss   Gentry   stared,   then   smiled  in   sentimental   sympathy 
"  Is  he  a  nice  boy  ?  "  she  cooed. 

"  Wlio  ?  Ye-es,  very  nice,"  Jinny  stammered.  "  But  I've 
just  remembered  Miss  Jones  isn't  his  sister  !  " 

"  Who  said  she  was  ?  Oh,  Jinny,  Jinny !  "  Miss  Gentry 
sometimes  became  roguish. 

"  She's  only  his  stepsister,"  Jinny  explained  desperately. 
"  Mrs.  Purley's  first  husband  was  called  Jones." 

If  the  bride  should  really  be  the  Purley  creature — the  fair 

2  A 


370  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

charmer  who  rode  so  often  in  Will's  coach  as  to  be  almost 
"  keeping  com^pany  "  with  him  !  What  a  lifting  of  a  nightmare  ! 
What  a  sudden  horizon  of  rose  !  But  no,  it  was  too  good  to  be 
true  !  -  >^^ 

"  But  I  never  heard  she  was  called  Cleopatra,"  she  wound  up 
sadly. 

"  People  often  have  a  second  name  hidden  away  like  a  tuck," 
said  Miss  Gentry. 

"  But  her  first  name  isn't  the  same  either,  it's  Blanche." 

"But  Bianca  is  Blanche  !  "  bayed  Miss  Gentry,  like  an  excited 
bloodhound.     "  Only  more  grand  and  foreign-like." 

Jinny's  colours  revolved  again. 

"  Is  it  ?  "  she  breathed.  But  she  remembered  Mr.  Flippance's 
address  had  been  announced  as  Frog  Farm.  If  he  had  thus 
ousted  young  Mr.  Flynt,  she  urged,  how  could  he  be  living  so 
amicably  under  his  rival's  roof  ?  Besides,  how  should  Mr. 
Purley's  second  wife,  a  matron  as  famous  for  her  cheeses  as  her 
spouse  for  his  hurdles,  have  christened  her  girl  so  outlandishly  ? 
No,  Joneses  were  as  abundant  as  hips  and  haws,  and  this  Miss 
Jones  could  only  have  come  to  their  out-of-the-way  parish — ^like 
Mr.  Flippance — for  reasons  of  statutory  residence,  though  why 
the  Showman  should  bury  himself  to  be  married.  Miss  Gentry 
declared  to  be  an  exciting  enigma.  Perhaps  he  liked  a  quiet 
wedding.  Jinny  suggested,  having  too  many  acquaintances  in 
towns,  and  with  that  she  dismissed  the  hope  from  her  mind. 

But  it  was  not  so  easy  to  dismiss  the  topic  from  Miss  Gentry's. 
That  lady  was  rolling  the  hymeneal  discussion  under  her  tongue. 
She  pointed  out  that  Foxearth  Farm  was  not  in  Little  Bradmarsh 
and  was  prepared  to  discuss  the  romantic  ramifications,  if  it 
should  turn  out  on  the  wedding-day  that  the  bride  was  dis- 
qualified. But  Jinny  cruelly  took  the  sweet  out  of  her  mouth. 
Foxearth  Farm  was  in  the  parish,  she  declared.  "  It's  one  of 
those  funny  bits,^  lost,  stolen,  or  strayed  into  other  parishes.  I 
know  because  of  the  women  from  there  who  come  upon  our 
parish  for  blankets  when  they're  laid  aside " 

"  Oh,  Jinny  !  "  deprecated  Miss  Gentry,  to  whom  maternity 
was  as  sordid  and  surreptitious  as  matrimony  was  righteously 
romantic. 

But  Jinny,  innocently  misunderstanding,  persisted.  "  Why,  I 
remember  the  fuss  when  the  steam-roller  tried  to  charge  our  parish 
for  doing  up  a  scrap  of  the  road  beyond  Foxearth  Farm." 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  371 

They  walked  through  the  sunlit  churchyard  in  constrained 
silence,  Miss  Gentry  feeling  as  if  the  steam-roller  had  gone  over 
roses.  But  stimulated  by  the  iron  pole  and  the  four  steps,  by 
which  ladies  who  rode  pillion  anciently  mounted  and  dismounted, 
she  began  wondering  who  would  be  making  the  bride's  dress. 
That  gave  Jinny  a  happy  idea.  How  if  she  got  Miss  Gentry  the 
work — that  would  be  a  slight  return  for  all  she  owed  her  ! 

"  Why  shouldn't  you  make  it  ?  "  she  inquired  excitedly.  "  I 
could  speak  to  Mr.  Flippance,  now  that  I  know  where  he  is." 

"  Hush,  child,  don't  profane  the  Sabbath  !  Men  don't  count 
in  wedding  matters,"  said  IMiss  Gentry  in  complex  correction. 
"  Nor  would  I  care  about  the  patronage  of  stage  people." 

"  But  she  mayn't  be  stage." 

"  Like  runs  to  like,"  Miss  Gentry  sighed,  and  Jinny  felt  the 
Colchester  romance  hovering  again.  But  it  did  not  descend. 
Instead,  Miss  Gentry  remarked  that  she  ought  to  have  known 
that  it  could  not  be  a  local  beauty.  No  play-actor  with  any 
brains  at  all  could  be  attracted  by  anything  hereabouts,  especially 
when  they  could  not  achieve  the  acquaintance  of  women  of  real 
attraction  and  intellect,  these  preferring  the  company  of  cats  to 
that  of  strolling  sinners.  Nevertheless,  far  be  it  from  her 
wilfully  to  rob  Jinny  of  a  commission. 

"  I  wasn't  thinking  of  my  commission,"  Jinny  protested  with 
a  little  flush. 

"  I  couldn't  dream  of  it  otherwise.  Squibs  and  I  need  so  little 
and  have  more  work  than  we  can  manage." 

"  Squibs  ?  "  Jinny  murmured. 

"  The  place  is  overrun  with  rats,"  Miss  Gentry  explained. 
"  What  will  it  be  when  the  cold  drives  them  in  from  the  ditches  ? 
However,  fortunately  that  horrible  old  Mawhood  stands  com- 
pelled to  clear  the  cottage  before  winter.  That  was  the  com- 
promise our  too  kindly  pastor  let  him  off  with." 

"So  you  told  me.     Shall  I  order  the  Deacon  at  once  ?  " 

"  The  Deacon  ?  "  Miss  Gentry  sniffed.  "  Bishops  they'll  call 
themselves  next." 

"  There  is  a  bishop,"  Jinny  reminded  her.     "  Bishop  Harrod." 

"  Wretched  little  rat-catchers  !  "  Miss  Gentry  hissed.  "  Setting 
themselves  up  against  the  Church  Established.  I'm  so  glad 
you're  done  with  them." 

"  But  I'm  not,"  Jinny  confessed  shyly.     "  I'm  still  Peculiar." 

"  You  are,  indeed  !  "  Miss  Gentry  cried,  startled.     "  Do  you 


372  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

mean  to  tell  me  that  after  the  glorious  privilege  of  sitting  under 

Mr.  Fallow !  "     Words  failed  her,  and  they  also  failed  Jinny, 

to  whom  tliis  unfamiliar  metaphor  conjured  up  a  puzzling 
picture  of  the  vicar  perched  on  her  Sunday  bonnet.  The  girl  was 
the  first  to  recover  her  breath. 

"  Gran'fer  told  me  my  mother  wanted  me  to  be  Peculiar,"  she 
explained.  "  I  can't  go  against  my  Angel-Mother."  Then  she 
blushed  prettily,  never  having  mentioned  the  angel  mother  since 
childhood,  and  feeling  somehow  as  if  she  had  profaned  a  sacred 
secret. 

"  If  your  angel  mother  was  alive,"  cried  Miss  Gentry  with 
conviction,  "  it's  to  our  church  that  she  would  come — to  our 
grand  old  church  with  its  storied  windows  !  " 

A  divine  thrill  ran  through  all  Jinny's  frame.  Her  belief  that 
her  mother  and  the  painted  angel  were  mysteriously  one  was 
sealed.     The  oracle  had  spoken. 

Miss  Gentry,  swelling  at  her  silence — Jinny  heard  the  silk 
crackling — felt  herself  indeed  an  oracle.  Squibs  had  his  pick  of 
the  plates  at  that  Sunday  dinner,  enjoying  a  Sabbath  rest  from 
rats,  and  basking  in  his  mistress's  lap,  a  black  curled-up  breathing 
mass  of  felicity. 

V 

As  Jinny  jogged  along  next  Tuesday  morning,  diverging  from 
her  usual  beat  to  take  in  the  hurdle-maker's  home,  that  lay — 
like  a  geological  "  fault  " — in  the  wrong  parish,  the  plan  that 
formed  itself  in  her  mind  was  to  approach  the  question  of  the 
bride  and  the  wedding-dress  by  way  of  Barnaby  Purley,  the 
youth  who  had  so  cliivalrously  come  to  her  rescue  by  delivering 
at  Uckford  Manor  the  keg  of  oil  overlooked  by  her  on  that  memor- 
able journey  with  Elijah  Skindle.  It  was  because  Foxearth 
Farm  possessed  this  hobbledehoy  scion  and  a  trap  of  its  own 
that  Jinny  had  never  done  its  marketing,  nor  come  face  to  face 
with  the  creature  of  whom  with  sidelong  eye  she  caught  tan- 
talizing glimpses  in  the  Flynt  Flyer.  "  Not  bad-lookin'  "  was 
the  countryside's  appraisal  of  her,  which  was  rather  ominous, 
indicating  as  it  did  considerable  beauty,  and  conjoined  as  it  v/as 
with  a  rumour  of  easy  conquests,  culminating  in  the  coach- 
owner.  But  a  good  square  look  at  her  had  not  been  attainable, 
even  on  Sunday,  for  though  the  family  was  Church  of  England — 
Mr.   Giles  Purley  being  even  a  churchwarden — it  preferred  to 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  373 

worship  in  the  parish  church  to  which  it  did  not  parochially 
belong.  Jinny  told  herself  she  was  hastening  at  this  first  oppor- 
tunity purely  in  Miss  Gentry's  interest,  for  fear  the  bridal  gown 
had  been  ordered  elsewhere.  But  she  could  not  quite  disguise 
from  herself  her  consuming  anxiety  to  discover  whether  this 
everyday  Miss  Jones  was  really  a  Cleopatra,  though  she  called  her 
poignant  emotion  mere  curiosity,  and  deemed  herself  as  apathetic 
at  heart  as  the  bumble-bees  now  crawling  miserably  about  her 
cart,  which  could  be  flicked  into  a  feeble  flight  and  drone,  but 
which  soon  relapsed  into  their  torpor. 

In  truth  the  suppressed  hope  of  finding  Blanche  safely  paired 
with  the  Show^man  was  now  quickening  her  pulses  and  restoring 
the  wild  rose  to  her  cheeks.  The  September  day,  too,  for  all  the 
long-continued  drought,  and  despite  the  drow^sy  bumble-bees, 
was  not  devoid  of  animating  influences,  especially  the  delicious 
smell  of  burnings  from  the  fields,  where  men  tossed  from  their 
prongs  brown  masses  of  weed  into  red  and  smoking  heaps,  or 
carried  like  merry  devils  fiery  forks  from  one  pile  to  another. 
Monstrous  fungi  clove  in  pied  picturesqueness  to  the  elm-trunks, 
and  a  hawthorn  grove  with  its  scarlet  berries  was  like  a  vast 
radiant  smile.  Overhead  the  sun,  a  shimmery  thin-clouded 
sphere,  showed  like  an  eye  in  a  great  white  peacock's  wing.  The 
hips  and  blackberries  were  interfused  in  the  hedges,  the  ivy 
flowered  on  the  squat  church  towers,  the  Virginia  creepers  were 
reddening  the  cottages,  and  the  dahlias  grew  tall  in  the  little 
front  gardens.  In  the  orchards  the  pear-trees  and  apple-trees 
were  heavy  with  fruit.  Around  them  the  turnip-fields  looked 
more  like  spreads  of  mustard,  so  thick  were  the  slender  yellow- 
flowering  stems  pushing  between  the  crop  proper.  And  every- 
where was  life  ;  pecking  poultry  scattering  before  Methusalem's 
feet,  and  little  frogs  playing  leapfrog ;  swarms  of  the  Daddy- 
long-legs  and  gigantic  spiders,  great  quarrelling  families  of  rooks, 
quiet  chewing  cattle,  pigs  nosing  for  acorns  or  windfall  apples, 
hares  or  great  rats  or  weasels  scuttling  across  the  road,  partridges 
straying  fearlessly  in  the  stubble,  swallows  darting  unpromisingly 
high,  and  when  Jinny  passed  over  the  little  brick  bridge,  at 
which  a  black  drainage-mill  waved  what  seemed  its  four 
crossed  white  combs,  a  pair  of  superb  swans  hissed  their  proud 
protectiveness  over  a  very  drab  cygnet. 

Driving  through  an  avenue  of  firs  and  hornbeam,  and  past  a 
dirty  pond  with  two  flagged  mounds  in  the  middle,  she  reached 


374  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  clearing  where  the  hurdle-maker  operated,  with  his  farm- 
house for  base  of  his  combined  industrial,  agricultural,  and  pastoral 
occupations. 

Mr,  Giles  Purley,  a  rosy-wrinkled  apple-faced  ancient,  stood  in 
his  shirt-sleeves,  looking  as  pleasantly  untidy  as  his  farmyard, 
which  was  full  of  felled  logs  and  split  wood,  and  bean  and  corn 
stacks,  and  ramshackle  sheds.  He  was  planing  off  knots  with 
a  bill-hook,  and  as  Jinny  drove  up  to  the  gate  of  the  old  timbered 
red  house,  he  greeted  her  with  a  cheery  grumble  at  the  drought 
which  forced  such  winter  work  prematurely  upon  him.  Jinny 
was  abashed  to  find  no  pretext  for  her  visit  coming  to  her  tongue, 
so  she  stammered  out  that  she  wanted  to  see  Barnaby,  and  the 
droll  look  that  twinkled  across  his  father's  face  sent  her  colour 
up  still  higher.  "  Always  wants  a  change,  they  youngsters," 
he  chuclded  benevolently,  "  whether  'tis  of  work  or  sweet- 
hearts." 

At  this  point  Jinny  became  aware  of  Barnaby  himself,  who, 
equally  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  was  smiling  sheepishly  up  at  her  from 
he  ditch  which  he  was  discumbering  with  a  hook.  "  Lilies  of 
the  walley  they  stick  in  their  buttonholes,"  went  on  his  father 
waggishly,  "  as  if  weeds  was  ever  aught  but  weeds.  There  ain't 
one  that  showlders  his  sack  o'  corn  or  sticks  to  his  dearie.     Sheep's 

eyes  they  can  make,  but  as  for  sheep-hurdles !  "     The  note 

was  now  earnest.  It  seemed  an  unpropitious  moment  to  tackle 
Barnaby. 

And  to  make  it  more  impossible,  Blanche  herself  suddenly 
bounded  from  the  orchard,  flourishing  a  great  corroded  pear. 

"  Nipped  thirteen  !  "  she  cried  gaily. 

"  Not  bad-lookin',"  forsooth  !  To  Jinny  she  appeared  in  her 
bloom  and  colour  like  a  rich  peach  dipped  in  cream  :  overripeness 
was  the  only  flaw  her  beauty  suggested  to  this  girl  in  her  teens. 
But  the  chiU  at  Jinny's  heart  did  not  prevent  her  crying  out  with 
equal  gaiety,  "  What  an  unlucky  number — for  the  wasps  !  " 

Barnaby  laughed  adoringly  from  his  ditch,  Mr.  Giles  Purley 
in  simple  joy  of  the  slaughter.  The  pigs,  he  explained  gleefully, 
had  gnawed  at  the  pear-bags  and  Blanche  was  "  wunnerful 
masterous  "  at  nipping  the  wasps  as  they  crawled  out  of  the 
forbidden  fruit.  Asps,  Jinny  found  herself  thinking,  would  have 
a  bad  time  at  such  bold  hands,  though  they  made  the  Cleopatra 
likelier — she  slued  her  eyes  round  to  see  the  rings  on  them,  but 
the  engagement  finger  was  hidden  by  the  big  pear,  and  Miss 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  375 

Jones,   her  gaiety   checked,   was   eyeing  her  like  the  intrude* 
she  was. 

"  She  can  kill  two  at  once,"  Barnaby  called  up. 

"  Like  you  with  the  lasses,"  flashed  his  father,  to  his  confusion. 

"  It's  nothing,"  said  Blanche  coldly.  "  They  haven't  time  to 
curl  their  tails  round." 

"  Who  ?  The  lasses  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  and  to  her  relief  the 
beautiful  Blanche  vouchsafed  a  smile. 

"  You  won't  be  stung  if  you  don't  think  you'll  be,"  the  girl 
explained  more  cordially.  Then,  unable  to  retain  the  proud 
secret  longer,  even  from  the  Carrier,  she  burst  forth,  "  I'm  going 
on  the  stage  mth  it." 

"  What !  "  Jinny  gasped. 

"  Only  as  a  beginning,  of  course.  '  Bianca,  Tlie  Bare-Handed 
Wasp-Killer,'  it'll  be  on  the  bUls." 

"  Rubbidge  1  "  came  explosively  from  Mr.  Purley.  "  And 
where  will  Mr.  Flippance  get  the  w apses  in  the  winter  ?  A  circus- 
slut  indeed — I  wonder  what  your  mother  can  be  thinkin'  of  !  And 
what's  Mr.  Honeytongue  going  to  bill  you  as,  Barnaby  ?  Not 
champion  hurdle-maker,  I'll  go  gaff  !  " 

"  Wait  till  you  see  me,"  said  Barnaby  with  sullen  mysterious- 
ness.'    "  You  don't  know  a  circus  from  a  theaytre." 

"  You'll  stick  to  your  shackles  and  bolts,"  said  his  parent 
grimly,  "  and  peel  the  bark  off,  too  !  " 

At  the  mention  of  Mr.  Flippance,  Jinny's  heart  beat  fast :  she 
felt  hovering  on  the  verge  of  the  revelation,  and  the  Bianca  and 
the  stage-project  rekindled  her  hope.  But  Mr.  Purley' s  grievance 
had  to  be  worked  off  first.  "  They're  too  lazy  to  peel  the  w^ood," 
he  explained  to  Jinny.  "  But  that's  the  main  thing  for  hurdles 
— to  strip  'em  well  against  rain.  Same  as  you  was  full-dressed 
in  a  pouring  rain — the  time  it  'ud  take  you  to  dry  !  If  you  was 
naked  now " 

"  Oh,  dad  !  "  Barnaby  remonstrated,  to  his  parent's  confusion, 
and  enjoyed  this  tit-for-tat. 

"  When  do  you  expect  Mr.  Flippance,  Mr.  Purley  ?  "  Jinny 
asked  him  hastily. 

"  Oh,  he  never  comes  in  the  mornings,"  Blanche  replied,  and 
this  appropriation  of  the  question  seemed  to  Jinny  to  continue 
the  promise  of  Bianca  and  the  stage-project. 

"  Then  can  I  speak  to — to  his  intended  ?  "  she  flashed  bril- 
liantly, with  a  clever  smile. 


376  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  She's  gone  to  her  dressmaker,"  said  Blanche  simply. 

It  was  a  double  blow,  and  Jinny  winced  before  it.  In  that 
twinkling  of  her  eye  Blanche  seemed  years  younger,  diabolically 
handsome,  a  nipper  of  buds  as  well  as  of  wasps.  But  a  worse 
blow  awaited  her,  for  she  had  scarcely  regained  her  composure 
when  the  distant  sound  of  a  wheezy  horn  and  a  sense  of  an 
impending  avalanche  brought  Blanche  into  bounding  activity 
again. 

''  Why,  there's  Will !  "  she  exclaimed  with  a  comic,  happy 
start.  "  And  me  not  dressed  yet  !  "  And  without  a  word  to 
the  little  Carrier,  she  ran  gaily  into  the  house. 

Frantically  clutching  Nip  who  w^as  about  to  spring  to  meet  the 
coach,  Jinny  cried  vague  thanks  to  the  hurdle-maker  and  hurried 
Methusalem^  down  a  by-Vvay  so  narrow  that  she  could  hardly 
squeeze  through  the  untrimmed  "  werges  "  neglected  of  Barnaby. 

VI 

When  she  heard  the  coach  well  on  its  way  again  on  the  Chip- 
stone  road,  with  Blanche  divined  within,  she  found  herself 
possessed  by  an  unexpected  urging  towards  Mr.  Flippance.  She 
had  no  real  round  any  longer — only  the  hours  to  fill  and  her 
grandfather  to  half  deceive — and  perhaps,  despite  Miss  Gentry's 
own  opinion,  the  bridegroom  might  yet  be  able  to  prevent  her 
being  cut  out  by  the  rival  pair  of  scissors.  The  truth  was, 
Jinny  felt  a  physical  need  of  the  toning  up  the  Showman  somehow 
imparted  to  life.  To  drive  around  the  rest  of  the  day  with 
practically  no  business  but  her  own  thoughts  would  be  too 
dreadful.  He  must  surely  babble  happily  about  his  bride,  and 
apart  from  the  interest  of  her  identity,  some  of  his  glow  could 
not  but  radiate  to  her.  And  there  was  Caleb  and  Martha  to  see, 
too — how  were  they  faring,  these  dear,  simple  creatures,  too  long 
unvisited  ?  But  then — thought  that  froze  the  heart  ! — had  she 
not  declared  she  would  never  set  foot  in  Frog  Farm  again  ?  No, 
she  answered  herself  defiantly — and  no  memory  of  hereditary 
quibbling,  notliing  of  her  sense  of  humour,  rose  to  trouble  the 
reply — all  she  had  said  was  that  Will  should  never  see  her  there. 
And  Will  was  safely  chained  to  the  Chipstone  road. 

All  the  same  she  looked  round  apprehensively  and  with  wildly 
beating  heart  before  she  allowed  Methusalem  to  lift  the  latch  of 
the  familiar  gate,  and  she  had  somehow  expected  so  great  a 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  377 

transformation  in  the  farmhouse  under  its  new  and  sinister 
activities,  and  was  conscious  of  so  vast  a  change  in  herself  since 
she  had  last  seen  it,  that  its  primitive  black  front  almost  startled 
her,  so  unchanged  did  it  appear.  True,  the  ferrets'  cages  were 
gone,  but  their  absence  only  made  it  more  its  old  self,  and  the 
moan  of  the  doves  was  as  reassuring  as  the  singing  of  the  kettle 
on  her  own  hearth.  Caleb's  red  shirt-sleeves  looked  for  once  in 
keeping  with  the  scene,  arising  as  they  did  out  of  yellow  flame- 
tinged  clouds  from  the  rubbish-heap  which  he  was  burning,  and 
the  pleasant  pungent  smell  of  which  filled  her  eyes  with  tears, 
half  smoke,  half  emiOtion.  Even  in  that  glow  the  homely  hair- 
circled  face  was  capable  of  a  new  illumination. 

"  Gracious  goodness,  there's  Jinny  !  "  He  ran  to  the  house- 
doQr.     "  Mother  !     Mother  !  ''  he  cried  in  jubilant  agitation. 

Martha  emerged  at  a  hobbling  run,  apron-girded.  Despite  the 
glow,  her  face  darkened. 

"  You  give  a  body  a  turn,"  she  grumbled.  "  I  almost  thought 
'twas  the  Golden  City  coming  dov/n." 

"  'Tis  nigh  as  good,"  he  retorted  boldly,  "  bein'  as  Jinny  was 
same  as  gone  there.     And  bless  me,  ef  she  don't  look  ghosty  !  " 

"  Good  morning,  Jinny  1  "  said  Martha  coldly.  "  We  don't 
need  a  carrier  now — with  our  coach  to  get  everything." 

Jinny's  cheeks  turned  far  from  "  ghosty."  ''  I  haven't  come 
to  you — only  to  Mr.  Flippance." 

"  But  he  gets  everything,  too,  through  Willie." 

"  I  know  that — I  merely  want  to  speak  to  him." 

"  You  can't  now." 

"  The  missus  means  he's  abed,"  Caleb  explained,  rushing  to 
Jinny's  relief,  and  indeed  the  information  brought  a  smile  back 
to  her  twitching  lips.  "  Minds  m.e  of  a  great  old  tortoise,  diggin' 
hisself  into  his  blankets.  Do  him  good  to  be  up  with  the  sun, 
same  as  when  Oi  was  a  scarecrow,  soon  as  the  wheat  was 
sown." 

"  You  don't  want  to  tell  everybody  you  began  as  a  scarecrow," 
said  Martha  frigidly. 

"  Ef  we're  rich  now,  dear  heart,  and  can  ride  in  our  own  coach, 
'tis, the  Lord's  hand,  not  ours.  Oi  watched  over  wheat  and 
winter  beans,  and  'arly  peas,  and  winter  oats,  and  then  spring 
barley,  but  all  the  time  the  Lord  was  watchin'  over  me." 

"  Not  as  a  scarecrow,"  said  Martha  severely. 

''  Oi    warn't    a    scarecrow    ploughin'-time,    bein'    set  on   the 


378  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

middle  hoss  to  flick  the  whip,  and  chance  times  when  'twas  too 
frosty  to  plough  Oi  went  to  Dame  Pippler's  to  school, 

"  I  never  heard  that  before,"  said  Martha. 

"  Dedn't  like  to  tell  ye,"  he  confessed,  "  being  as  'twas  too 
cowld  to  howd  the  sl^te-pencil,  and  the  book-larnin'  leaked  out 
'twixt  the  frosts.     'Twas  a  penny  a  week  wasted." 

Martha  saw  their  visitor  was  amused  at  this  revelation  after 
fifty  years  of  wedlock.  "  Jinny  wants  to  be  going  on,"  she 
observed  testily.     "  Look  at  all  her  boxes." 

"  Oi'm  proper  pleased  to  see  'em,  for  as  Oi  says  to  Willie,  Oi 
hope  as  you  ain't  hart  Jinny's  business  and  grieved  the  Lord. 
Ye  can't  sleep,  Oi  says,  ef  ye've  grieved  the  Lord." 

"  Then  Mr.  Flippance  must  be  a  saint,"  laughed  Jinny.  But 
she  was  touched  to  tears. 

Caleb  had,  however,  not  finished  liis  apologia  for  his  lack  of 
learning,  and  was  to  be  diverted  neither  by  Jinny's  jests  nor  his 
wife's  grimaces.  "  And  in  the  summer,"  he  explained  care- 
fully, "  Oi  got  to  goo  out  with  my  liddle  old  gun  agin  they 
bird-thieves,  though  peas  and  pebbles  was  all  the  shot  my 
feyther -" 

"  Can't  you  try  some  at  Mr.  Flippance's  window  ?  "  inter- 
rupted Jinny,  fearful  the  fretful  Martha  would  soon  close  her 
door  upon  her. 

"  Oi'd  have  to  stand  sideways  for  that  !  "  He  pointed  to  a 
hooked-back  casement.  "  Fust  he  kivers  hisself  up,  then  he 
opens  hisself  out  " — ^he  chuckled  contemptuously — "  'tis  *  in 
dock,  out  nettle,'  as  the  sayin'  goos." 

Jinny  lifted  her  little  horn  to  her  lips  and  blew  a  blast  so 
literally  rousing  that  hardly  had  its  echoes  died  than  from  the 
black  casement  framework  a  red  unshaven  face,  like  the  rayed 
rising  sun  on  an  inn  signboard,  dawned  above  clouds  of  flamboyant 
dressing-gown. 

"  Jinny  !  Hurrah  !  "  cried  the  apparition  in  delighted  sur- 
prise.    "  The  very  person  I've  been  wanting  for  weeks  !  " 

In  the  effulgence  of  that  great  rubicund  sphere  of  a  face 
Jinny's  mists  began  to  dissolve — after  all,  with  all  his  faults  he 
belonged  to  her  rosy  past,  to  the  good  old  times  ere  black  horses 
or  red  men  had  arisen  to  rend  her.  "  Then  why  didn't  you  let 
me  know  ?  "  she  smiled. 

"  Just  what  I  was  thinking  of  doing.  So  glad  you've  saved 
me    a   letter.     Never   was    so   hard-worked  in   my  life.     Good 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  379 

morning,  ma,"  he  threw  to  Mrs.  Flynt,  whose  set  face  now 
relaxed  into  a  maternal  mildness,  "  do  I  smell  breakfast  ?  " 

"  Ye  could  ha'  smelt  it  afore  seven,  friend,"  said  Caleb,  growing 
dour  as  Martha  grew  soft.  "  And  the  missus  a  bit  paltry  to-dav, 
too  !  " 

"  Am  I  late  ?  I'm  so  sorry.  Why,  I  thought  it  was  Will's 
horn  1  " 

"  Mr.  Flippance  overslept  himself,  dearie,"  Martha  said 
reproachfully. 

"  But  you  hate  food  spilin',"  Caleb  protested. 

"  Not  so  much  as  I  hate  spoilt  food  !  "  said  Tony.  "  Not  that 
a  good  housekeeper  like  Mrs.  Flynt  would  really  let  food  spoil — 
any  more  than  you  your  wheat-patch." 

"  Ef  ye  had  helped  gittin'  that  bit  o'  corn  in,"  retorted  Caleb, 
"  ye'd  fare  to  have  more  to  sleep  on." 

"  There's  more  than  one  kind  of  work,  Caleb,"  said  Martha 
severely.     "  There's  brain-work  for  them  that  have  never  been 


scarecrows." 


"  Yes,  indeed,  Mrs.  Flynt  ! "  said  Tony  earnestly.  "  I'm 
worked  to  a  shadow." 

"  And  there  was  no  such  hurry  to  get  the  corn  in,"  Martha 
added. 

"  With  all  they  prayers  for  rine  gooin'  on,  ye  can't  be  too 
careful,"  Caleb  urged. 

"  But  what  work  had  you  got,  Mr.  Flippance  ?  "  Jinny  laughed. 

"  Getting  married.     Didn't  you  know  ?  " 

She  was  startled.     "  But  you're  not  married  already  ?  " 

"  No  such  luck.  When  the  lady  says  *  Yes,'  you  think  all 
your  troubles  are  over.     But  they're  only  beginning." 

Caleb's  face  relaxed  in  a  grin,  whereupon  Martha's  hardened 
to  a  frown.  "  Marriage  is  no  laughing  matter,"  she  said,  with  a 
glower  at  her  husband. 

"  No,  indeed,  Mrs.  Flynt !  "  endorsed  Tony.  "  What  with  the 
forms  and  questions  and  ceremonies  and  witnesses  and  what  not, 
and  rings  to  buy  and  bouquets  to  order — it's  worse  than  a 
dress  rehearsal !  " 

"  But  you've  had  the  rehearsal,"  Jinny  reminded  him. 

"  I  was  young  and  strong.     Now  you've  got  to  help  me." 

"  Me  P  "  Jinny  was  enchanted  at  this  smoothing  of  the  path 
for  Miss  Gentry.  "  But  I'm  so  busy,"  she  protested  profes- 
sionally.    "  I  can't  wait  till  you're  up." 


38o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Jinny's  too  busy,"  Martha  corroborated.  And  in  her  eager- 
ness to  be  rid  of  the  girl,  she  unconsciously  clucked  to  Methu- 
salem,  and  so  exactly  like  Jinny  that  the  noble  animal  actually 
started. 

"  Wait !  Wait  !  "  Mr.  Flippance  shouted  down  wildly.  "  Do 
wait  !  Such  a  lot  to  consult  you  about.  Haven't  even  got  a 
best  man  yet.  Find  me  one  and  I'll  call  down  blessings  on  your 
head  !  " 

"  I  don't  want  you  to  call  them,  down^^'^  she  jested  up.  "  That's 
the  trouble." 

"  m  be  down  before  you  can  say  '  Jack  Robinson.'  " 

'*  I  wasn't  going  to  suggest  him  1  "  And  she  reined  in  her 
fiery  steed. 

Martha  had  hurried  to  her  kitchen  to  bring  in  the  belated 
breakfast,  and  the  convulsion  into  which  Jinny's  last  remark 
appeared  to  throw  Caleb  was  left  unchecked  by  wifely  grimaces. 
The  veteran  alternated  between  gurgles  and  roars  so  continuously 
that  Jinny,  flattered  as  she  was  by  the  reception  of  her  jest, 
began  to  feel  uneasy. 

"  That  fair  flabbergasted  him,"  he  gasped,  getting  his  breath 
at  last.  ''  How  can  Oi,  says  Oi,  ef  Oi'm  a  buoy-oy,  Oi  says." 
He  wiped  the  tears  from  his  w^hiskered  cheeks  and  blew  his  nose 
into  his  great  "  muckinger." 

"  But  he  didn't  ask  you  to  be  best  man,"  she  said,  puzzled. 
"  And  you  aren't  a  boy." 

"  'Twas  master  as  called  me  a  buoy-oy,"  he  explained,  his  eyes 
still  dancing,  "  so  as  to  keep  down  my  wages.  Oi've  got  three 
bosses  same  as  the  min,  Oi  says,  and  can  plough  my  stetch 
similar- same  as  them  and  cut  and  trave  up  my  corn  better'n 
Bill  Ravens  as  felt  the  teeth  of  the  sickle  two  days  arter  he 
started  and  couldn't  work  no  more,  though  double-money  time, 
as  Oi  can  sartify  bein'  as  'twar  me  what  tied  my  neckercher 
round  his  arm  with  the  blood  pourin'  down  like  sweat,  and 
lucky  'twarn't  his  wife,  Oi  says,  but  another  woman  gooin' 
behind  him^  to  be  larnt  how,  she  bein'  in  confinement.  But 
master  he  wouldn't  listen  to  nawthen.  Oi'll  ^xm^  you  easy 
ploughin'  was  all  he  promised,  ye're  onny  a  buoy-oy,  he  says, 
obstinacious  like,  and  Oi  stayed  on  a  bit,  not  mislikin'  the  cans 
of  tea  the  wives  brought,  all  hot  and  sweet,  and  the  big  granary 
with  pillars  and  fower  on  us  thrashin'  and  rattlin'  on  the  big 
oak  floor,  jolly  as  a  harvest  supper,  and  Bill  Ravens — that  be 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  381 

the  feyther  of  the  rollin'  stone  as  shears  chance  times  for  Master 
Peartree — singin'  like  the  saints  in  Jerusalem,  all  except  for 
the  words.  But  at  last,  bein'  as  feyther  wanted  the  money  and 
Oi  needed  time  to  look  for  a  farmer  not  so  nippy,  gimme  a 
week  off,  says  Oi  to  old  Skindflint.  A  week  off  !  says  master. 
WTiat  for  ?     Gooin'  to  git  married  ?  " 

At  this  point  the  convulsion  recommenced,  and  Jinny,  though 
she  understood  how  the  Flippance  wedding  had  set  his  memories 
agog,  had  still  to  wait  for  enlightenment  as  to  why  they  were 
agrin. 

"  Married,  Oi  says !  How  can  Oi  git  married,  ef  Oi'm  a 
buoy-oy  ?  " 

It  was  out  at  last,  the  great  repartee  of  his  life,  and  Jinny  felt 
he  was  right  to  cherish  its  memory.  She  occupied  the  period  of 
his  renewed  cachinnation  in  descending  from  her  seat  and  giving 
Methusalem  his  impoverished  nosebag.  Her  action  reminded 
Caleb  to  offer  to  show  her  the  enlarged  stables,  with  the  old  roof 
raised  to  admit  the  coach.  Then,  colouring  as  if  at  an  indelicacy, 
he  hastily  inquired  how  her  grandfather  was,  remarking  with 
commiseration  that  he  must  be  getting  a  bit  elderly. 

Never  had  Jinny  known  him  so  loquacious — the  absence  of 
Martha  was  combining  with  her  own  advent  to  loosen  his 
usually  ruly  member.  And  at  last  the  pent-up  flood  of  his 
grievances  against  the  Showman  burst  forth.  The  return  of 
Will,  Jinny  gathered,  had  been  dislocating  enough,  even  before 
his  new-fangled  coach  had  brought  the  stir  of  the  great  world 
and  Bundock  almost  daily,  but  now  the  house  and  the  hours 
were  all  "  topsy-tivvy,"  worse  than  in  Cousin  Caroline's  time. 
He  would  do  Will  the  justice  to  say  that  it  wasn't  his  fault — Will 
had  been  against  putting  up  a  "  furriner  "  in  their  spare  bedroom 
— but  the  "  great  old  sluggaby "  had  come  and  ingratiated 
himself  so  with  the  rheumatic  but  romantic  .Martha,  and  offered 
such  startling  prices — a  pound  a  week  for  board  and  lodging — 
"  enough  to  feed  the  whole  Pennymole  family  for  a  fortnight  " — 
that  she  had  forced  her  will  upon  both  the  male  Flynts.  "  The 
trouble  wdth  Martha  is,"  Caleb  summed  up,  "  she  alius  wants 
what  she  wants."  Mr.  Flippance,  he  explained,  "  got  a  piper 
for  her  from  her  Lunnon  Sin  Agog — funny  name  that  for  the 
Lord's  House,  even  in  Lunnon — and  that  piper  fared  to  be  all 
about  the  Christy  Dolphins  and  their  doin's — the  Loightstand, 
Martha  called  it.     And  she  read  me  a  piece  out  of  it  how  Mr. 


382  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Somebody,  husband  o'  Sister  T'other,  was  baptized  by  Elder 
Somebody  Else  ;   and  she  wanted  me  to  goo  and  do  likewise." 

"  But  you  are  nearly  one  of  them,  aren't  you  ?  "  Jinny  smiled. 

He  looked  uneasy. 

"  Oi  don't  want  to  be  baptized  a  Jew,"  he  said  plaintively. 
"  Martha  she  argufies  as  Paul  says  we  are  the  Jews,  bein' 
Abraham's  seed  in  our  innards.  So  long  as  she  calls  us  the 
Lord's  people,  Oi  fair  itches  to  be  one,  but  that  goos  agin  the 
stomach  like  to  call  yourself  a  Jew.  Same  as  she  was  satisfied 
with  the  New  Jerusalem  part,  Oi'd  goo  mth  her.  For  ef  the 
Book  says,  *  No  man  hath  gone  up  to  heaven,'  or  '  Whither  Oi 
goo,  ye  cannot  come,'  that  proves  as  heaven's  got  to  come  to  us, 
and  happen  Oi'll  live  to  see  it  droppin'  down  with  its  street  of 
pure  gold  same  as  transparent  brass.  But  Oi  won't  be  swallowed 
up  whole  like  a  billy-owl  swallows  a  mouse." 

"  What's  that  you're  saying,  Caleb  ?  "  said  Martha,  now 
perceived  back  at  her  house-door. 

"  He  was  telling  me  about  the  Lightsiani^''  said  Jinny  glibly. 

Martha  beamed  again.  "  Ah,  it  won't  be  long  before  that 
light  spreads,  though  nov/  the  world  is  all  shrouded  in  darkness 
and  superstition.     But  salvation  is  of.  the  Jews." 

"  That  ain't  writ  in  the  Book  ?  "  inquired  Caleb  anxiously. 

''  Salvation  is  of  the  Jews,"  repeated  Martha  implacably. 
"John  iv.  22.  There's  nine  of  us  now  in  Essex  alone,  the 
Lightstand  says,  not  reckoning  London.  They  don't  know 
about  another  that's  on  the  way  Zionwards,"  she  added  mys- 
teriously. 

"  Meaning  me  ?  "  said  Caleb  nervously. 

"  Meaning  a  man  with  brains  and  book-learning,"  said  Martha 
sternly,  "  and  he's  ready  to  see  you  now.  Jinny." 

"  Well,  nine  ain't  no  great  shakes,"  Caleb  murmured. 

"  We  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,"  Martha  reminded  him.  "  A 
pinch  of  salt  goes  a  long  way." 

"  Ay,  when  it  rolls  in  a  pill-box,"  Caleb  reflected  ruefully. 
''  And  how's  the  old  chapel.  Jinny  r  "  he  said  aloud.  "  Willy 
never  goos  now." 

Jinny  coloured  up  :  one  of  her  pretexts  for  apostacy  seemed 
null  and  void. 

'^  I'll  see  you  when  I  come  out,  I  suppose,"  she  said  evasively, 
as  she  followed  Martha  within. 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  383 

VII 

The  parlour  of  Frog  Farm  had  not  the  peculiar  mustiness 
which  greeted  Jinny's  nostrils  when  last  she  peeped  into  it  that 
tragic  morning  of  Maria's  illness,  but  there  was  by  way  of  com- 
pensation a  reek  of  stale  tobacco  and  the  odours  of  the  breakfast 
bacon  and  mushrooms,  while  in  lieu  of  the  sacrosanct  tidiness 
there  was  a  pervasion  of  papers,  with  a  whole  mass  of  scripts 
sliding  steadily  from  the  slippery  sofa.  The  brown-lozenged 
text  on  the  wall :  "  When  He  giveth  quietness,  who  then  can 
m^ake  trouble  ?  "  seemed  to  shriek  for  Caleb's  answer  :  "  Friend 
Flippance."  Other  documents  bulged  and  bristled  from  both 
pockets  of  the  dressing-gown  as  from  greasy  paniers. 

"  Bless  you.  Jinny,"  Tony  gurgled  from  his  breakfast-cup. 
He  eyed  her  rapturously.  "  What  a  pretty  pair  you'll  make  at 
the  wedding  !  " 

"  It's  no  use,  Mr.  Flippance,"  said  Martha,  beaming,  "  I've 
told  you  before  I  won't  go  into  a  church." 

Mr.  Flippance,  w^ho  had  been  mentally  coupling  his  bride  and 
Jinny,  replied  with  but  the  briefest  muscular  quiver,  that  the 
only  thing  that  reconciled  him  to  Martha's  absence  was  that  she 
was  incapacitated  by  matrimony  from  the  role  of  bridesmaid. 
This  morning  he  would  not  trouble  her  to  wait.  "You  can 
'  withdraw '  from  me,"  he  said  jocosely. 

Martha  was  jarred  by  this  profane  use  of  the  sacred  vocabiilary, 
and  moreover  felt  it  almost  as  improper  to  leave  Jinny  alone  in 
her  house,  even  with  a  budding  bridegroom.  "  Jinny's  got  no 
secrets  from  me,"  she  said  tartly;  and  Mr.  Flippance,  divining 
his  error,  remarked  blandly,  "  Nor  have  I."  And  as  Martha 
started  to  dust  the  mantelpiece  ornaments  and  to  discover  cigar- 
ash  in  her  china  shoes,  he  drew  Jinny's  attention  to  the  "  beauti- 
ful "  silk  sampler  that  hung  over  them.  "  And  all  worked  with 
Mrs.  Flynt's  own  hand  !  What  a  v/onderful  lion — and  as  for 
the  unicorn,  she's  got  it  to  the  life  !  " 

"  Oh,  it's  only  what  I  did  when  a  girl,"  said  Martha,  blushing 
modestly.  "  Only  I  didn't  like  to  hang  it  up  then,  because  I'd 
left  no  room  for  the  foreign  trees  like  my  sisters  put  in  !  " 

"  Well,  but  you've  got  in  the  alphabet,  big  and  little,  and  all 
the  figures  !     Wonderful !  " 

"  That's  where  Willie  learnt  his  A  B  C  from,"  said  Martha, 
radiant. 


384  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Ah,  that  gay  deceiver  !  "  sighed  Mr.  Flippance.  "  He  told 
me  he  was  a  Yankee,  but  now  I  find  he's  only  a  yumorist.  Still 
he's  a  chap  any  woman  can  be  proud  of — what  do  you  sav, 
Jinny  ?  " 

Jinny,  who  had  seated  herself  on  the  sofa,  carefully  steadied 
the  slipping  manuscripts  as  she  replied  with  a  forced  lightness  : 
"  I  say,  if  you  want  a  best  man,  you  can't  find  a  better." 
'"  Ah,  that's  the  trouble.  He  won't  take  part  in  a  Church 
ceremony  neither,  he  says  he's  got  to  consider  the  old  folks — at 
the  chapel,"  he  added  promptly.  "  But  at  any  rate  we  shall 
have  the  best  bridesmaid." 

"  You  don't  mean  me  ?  "  said  Jinny,  colouring  under  his 
admiring  gaze.  *'  Because  it's  impossible.  I  haven't  the  time 
— or  the  money." 

"  Is  it  the  dress  you're  thinking  of  ?  Surely  the  Theatre 
Royal,  Chipstone,  can  run  to  that  ?  "  And  pulling  a  protrusive 
scroll  from  a  pocket  of  his  dressing-gown,  he  unfurled  it  beatifi- 
cally,  exposing  a  poster  with  the  coupled  names  of  Anthony 
Flippance  and  Cleopatra  Jones  in  giant  letters. 

"  Anthony  and  Cleopatra  !  "  he  breathed  in  a  ravishment. 
"  The  moment  she  told  me  her  second  name  was  Cleopatra  I 
knew  it  was  useless  fighting  against  the  fates." 

"  But  have  you  bought  our  chapel  then  ?  "  Jinny  inquired. 
"  Bought  your  chapel  ?  "    Mr.  Flippance  was  mystified.    "  Why 
on  earth  should  I  buy  your  chapel  ?  " 

"  You — you  might  have  turned  it  into  a  theatre  1  "  she  stam- 
mered apologetically. 

He  waved  the  suggestion  away  with  a  jewelled  hand.  "  Only 
a  new  Temple  of  Thespis  could  live  up  to  Anthony  and  Cleopatra. 
We  are  building  !  " 

"  Where  ?  "  Now  it  was  Jinny  that  was  mystified — she  had 
seen  no  such  enterprise  afoot. 

"  Here  !  "  He  tapped  the  other  pocket  of  his  dressing-gown. 
"  Plans  !  "  He  rolled  up  his  poster  reluctantly.  "  Cleopatra 
wanted  to  see  it  in  print.     Didn't  I  say  what  a  work  getting 

married  was  ?     But  now  that  the  bridesmaid's  settled 1  " 

"  But  she's  not  !  "  said  Jinny,  m>ore  alarmed  than  when  he 
was  trying  to  cast  her  for  the  bride,  perhaps  because  the  danger 
of  being  sucked  in  was  greater. 

"  Oh,  Jinny  !  "  He  looked  at  her  with  large  reproachful  eyes 
and  mechanically  threw  bacon  to  Nip,  who  had  at  last  sniffed 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  385 

his  way  in,  and  who,  fortunately  for  Martha's  composure,  caught 
it  ere  it  reached  her  carpet.  "  You  see  she  wants  to  have  the 
thing  all  regular  and  respectable,  and  all  her  family  are  in  Wales. 
She  hasn't  got  a  parent  handy  to  give  her  away.  And  having 
led  a  wandering  life,  she  hadn't  even  a  parish  to  marry  in.  I 
never  thought  you'd  desert  an  old  pal." 

"  But  I'm  no  pal  of  hers — I  don't  even  know  her." 

"  Oh,  Jinny  !  "  And  just  arresting  a  paper-slide,  he  extricated 
a  photograph  from  the  imperilled  mass.  "  The  new  Scott  Archer 
process,"  he  declared  proudly.  "  Knocks  your  daguerreotypes 
into  the  middle  of  last  week.     Good  gag  that,  eh  ?  " 

But  it  was  Jinny  who  seemed  knocked  into  that  period  ;  and 
not  only  by  this  new  triumph  of  the  camera.  For  in  this  won- 
derful breathing  image  she  recognized — in  all  save  size,  for  this 
seemed  a  Cleopatra  swelling  to  regal  stature — the  beauteous  human 
doll  she  had  last  seen  walking  down  the  steps  of  a  toy  house, 
conning  a  part. 

"  But  she's  married  !  "  she  gasped. 

"  Not  yet.  Would  to  heaven  it  were  all  over  !  "  said  Mr. 
Flippance  airily,  but  his  great  brow  grew  black  for  an  instant  ere 
he  turned  it  sunnily  on  Martha.  "  Oh,  ma,  could  I  have  more  of 
these  marvellous  mushrooms  ?  " 

"  I'll  see,  you  greedy  boy,"  she  smiled,  retreating. 

"  Well,  who  could  help  saying  encore  to  such  items  ?  "  He 
turned  reproachfully  on  Jinnv.  "  You  nearly  shocked  the  old 
lady." 

"  But  didn't  you — didn't  you  call  her  the  Duchess  ?  "  Jinny 
stammered.  "  Oh,  but  perhaps  it  is  Mrs.  Duke's  sister — she 
looks  taller." 

"  That's  because  she's  got  no  legs,"  he  explained  paradoxically. 
"  But  it's  all  right — ^The  Loveliest  Leading  Lady  in  London." 
(Jinny  heard  the  capital  letters  distinctly.) 

He  went  on  to  explain  that  London  didn't  know  this  yet,  and 
that  some  time  must  elapse  before  Cleopatra  would  be  in  a 
position  to  demonstrate  it  on  the  spot,  owing  to  local  jealousies. 
But  Jinny  came  back  remorselessly  to  her  point. 

"  But  surely  she  was  married  to  Mr.  Duke  1  " 

"  Hush  !  Appearances  are  deceptive.  They  were  just  close 
friends." 

"  You  couldn't  well  be  closer — in  that  doll's  house,"  said  Jinny 
scornfully.     And   her   own    words   reminded   her   how  he   had 

2  B 


386  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

denounced  the  Duchess  as  a  "  squeaking  doll  "  whose  "  golden  " 
hair  was  spurious. 

"  Now  you  shock  nte,  Jinny,"  said  Mr.  Flippance  severely. 
"  Pure  as  the  driven  snow  is  my  Cleo,  stainless  as  the  Lady 
Agnes,  shut  up  in  that  great  oak  chest  on  her  wedding  morn,  sweet 
as  her  namesake,  Bianca,  in  7 he  Taming  of  the  Shrew, ^^ 

"  Why  does  she  tame  shrews  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  puzzled. 

"  That's  a  play  by  Shakespeare  " — the  name  not  occurring 
in  the  Spelling-Book,  left  Jinny  unimpressed.     "  A  shrew  is  a 


vixen." 


This  natural  history  left  Jinny  still  less  impressed.  "  That's 
nonsense,"  she  said.  "  A  shrew  is  tiny  and  lovely  to  look  at, 
with  darling  rounded  ears.  I  buried  one  the  other  day,  and  its 
eye  was  as  bright  as  life." 

"  It's  only  a  way  of  speaking,"  he  explained,  "  as  you  call  a 
woman  a  cat.  Katharina's  the  polecat  of  the  play  that  het 
husband  has  to  tame  wdth  a  whip,  but  Bianca  is  a  dove,  gentle 
and  spotless." 

"  Doves  are  not  so  gentle,"  said  Jinny.  "  They  peck  each 
other  dreadfully.  I  like  vixens  better,  at  least  they  seem  fonder 
of  their  family  when  you  peep  down  their  earths." 

Mr.  Flippance,  who  had  never  in  his  life  seen  either  a  shrew 
or  a  vixen  or  a  polecat  or  observed  the  habits  of  doves,  was  taken 
aback.  He  had  even  a  vague  sense  of  blasphemy,  some  ancient 
religious  images  whirring  confusedly  in  his  brain.  "  Understand 
this,  Jinny,"  he  said  sharply,  abandoning  the  shifting  sands  of 
metaphor,  "  Cleo  gave  Mr.  Duke  her  companionship  and  her 
artistic  co-operation,  but  as  for  marrying  him — bring  me  that 
Book  !  " 

He  indicated  the  precious  volume  which  Mrs.  Flynt  had  left 
in  the  parlour  for  his  study  of  the  text-evidence  of  the  Chris ta- 
delphian  teaching.  But  Jinny  took  his  Bible  oath  for  granted. 
Sincerity  and  righteous  indignation  radiated  from  every  round 
inch  of  his  face,  and  Jinny,  despite  her  farmyard  experience,  was 
too  nebulous  in  her  ideas  of  human  matings  not  to  be  shaken. 
In  truth  he  had  been  vastly  relieved  by  the  discovery  that  the 
couple  had  pretermitted  the  ceremony  and  that  he  was  saved 
the  tedium  and  expense  of  a  divorce  suit,  though  he  wondered 
why  Mr.  Duke  with  his  meticulous  book-keeping  and  contracts 
should  be  so  loose  where  women  were  concerned,  while  he,  so 
averse  from  parchments  and  figures,  had  a  proper  respect  for  the 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  387 

marriage-tie.  Human  nature  was  devilishly  deep,  he  thought  : 
no  wonder  a  man  got  drowned  if  he  tried  to  fathom  himself. 

But  Jinny,  though  she  now  believed  she  had  misunderstood 
the  ducal  menage^  was  not  without  an  instinctive  distrust.  ^*  She 
didn't  want  to  live  in  the  caravan,"  she  protested. 

"  No,"  he  agreed,  misapprehending  the  local  idiom.  "  It  was 
that  pig-headed  wire-puller  who  wanted  it.  Duke's  the  villain 
of  the  piece,  abusing  my  darling's  innocence  and  exploiting  her 
artistic  aspirations.  He  got  round  the  poor  girl,  knowing  her 
aunt  had  left  her  all  her  money.  Cleo,  my  dear  Jinny,  is  the 
niece  of  the  famous  Cleopatra,  the  Cairo  Contortionist,  after 
whom  she  w^as  christened,  and  whose  death  a  year  or  so  ago 
eclipsed  the  gaiety  of  Astley's  and  Mr.  Batty's  vl^'n  Hippodrome." 

"  Was  she  so  beautiful  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  somewhat  awed. 

"  I  w^as  in  love  with  her  myself  in  my  youth,"  Mr.  Flippance 
replied  simply.  "  But  though  you  could  gossip  with  her  round 
the  coke-brazier  at  the  back  of  the  ring,  she  always  made  you 
feel  that  no  man  was  worthy  to  chalk  the  soles  of  her  tight-rope 
shoes.  And  her  niece,  as  you  have  doubtless  perceived,  has  the 
same  grand  manner." 

"  Then  why  did  she  keep  company  with  Mr.  Duke  ?  " 

Jinny  returned  to  the  sore  spot,  Mr.  Flippance  felt,  like  a 
buzzing  bluebottle. 

"  If  you  don't  believe  me,"  he  cried,  *'  show  me  the  little 
Dukes  and  Duchesses.     Where  are  they  ?     Produce  'em." 

He  looked  at  her  fiercely — as  demanding  a  rain  of  coroneted 
cherubs  from  the  air. 

The  bold  stroke  put  the  climax  to  Jinny's  obfuscation. 
Marriage  without  children  was  practically  unknown  on  her  round, 
though  the  children  often  died.  "  Don't  you  see  he  wanted  to 
compromise  her  ?  "  pursued  Tony  triumphantly,  after  giving  the 
cherubs  a  reasonable  time  to  materialize.  "  He  thought  she'd 
never  dare  break  away  with  her  money,  and  that  he  could  spend 
her  last  farthing  on  boosting  himself  into  the  legitimate.  He's 
aU  right  with  the  marionettes — a  dapster  as  you  say  here,"  Mr. 
Flippance  admitted  magnanimously.  "  But  as  an  actor  he  could 
no  more  expect  to  please  my  public  than  to  keep  Cleo  hidden  in 
a  bushel.  He  might  throw  up  the  sponge  and  go  back  to  his 
fantoccini — but  what  career  was  that  for  Cleo  ?  She  broke  with 
him  on  the  nail — the  partnership,  I  mean.  And  I  ask  you,  ma," 
he  wound  up,  with  an  appreciative  sniff  as  Martha  re-entered, 


388  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

not  only  with  mushrooms  but  fresHy  fried  bacon,  "  what  woman 
of  spirit  could  do  otherwise  ?  " 

Mrs.  Flynt  beamed  assent,  and  her  apparent  acquaintance  with 
the  facts  contributed  to  lull  Jinny's  uneasiness.  Surely  the 
pious  Martha  w^ould  not  connive  at  scandalous  proceedings. 
Relieved,  she  sat  silent;  wondering — ^while  Mr,  Flippance  did 
jovial  justice  to  the  encore  dish — what  the  Duchess  would  think 
if  she  knew  that  she.  Jinny,  could  have  anticipated  her  in  the 
rdle  of  the  second  Mrs.  Flippance.  And  what  would  Polly  have 
thought  of  her  as  a  stepmother,  she  wondered  still  more  whim- 
sically. Perhaps  between  them  they  could  have  made  a  man  of 
him.  She  had  never  seen  his  daughter  over  her  cigar  and  milk 
or  her  sense  of  Polly  as  a  pillar  of  respectability  might  have  been 
shattered. 

"  And  how  is  Miss  Flippance  ?  "  she  said. 

His  face  changed  suddenly — rain -clouds  overgloomed  the  sun. 
His  fork  fell  from  his  fingers.  "  You  don't  know  what  daughters 
are,"  he  blubbered.     "  She's  left  me  !  " 

"  Left  you  ?  " 

"  Ask  ma,"  he  half  sobbed.     It  was  infinitely  pathetic. 

"  Don't  let  it  get  cold  again,"  Martha  coaxed. 

"  I  can't  eat."  He  lit  a  cheroot  abstractedly,  and  the  old 
woman  and  the  young  girl  followed  his  silent  puffings  with  a 
yearning  sympathy,  while  Nip  begged,  unheeded. 

"  Mad  on  marionettes  is  PoUy,"  he  said  at  last.  "  The  moment 
I  got  rid  of  'em,  she  packed  up  my  things  and  was  off." 

"  Stole  your  things  ?  "  cried  the  startled  Jinny. 

"No — no.  She  knew  I  should  be  moving  on  for  the  banns — 
Cleo  likes  a  quiet  place — so  she  left  me  tidy.  That  was  her  sole 
conception  of  her  duty  to  her  legal  pa.  But  she  had  always 
looked  upon  me  as  a  thing  to  be  tidied — not  a  soul  to  be  loved 
and  cherished."  He  wiped  an  eye  with  the  sleeve  of  his  dressing- 
gown  and  asked  brokenly  for  his  brandy.  Martha  hurried  to  his 
bedroom. 

"  But  perhaps  your  daughter'!!  come  back,"  Jinny  suggested 
soothingly. 

"  God  forbid  !  "  he  cried.  "  I  mean  they'd  be  at  it  hammer 
and  tongs.     Perhaps  Providence  does  all  things  for  the  best." 

"  But  where  has  she  gone  ?  "  Jinny's  sympathy  was  now 
passing  to  Polly,  as  she  began  to  grasp  the  true  complexity  of 
her  exodus. 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  389 

"  To  her  grandmother  in  Cork,  I  expect."  He  blew  a  placid 
puff.  "  Did  I  never  tell  you  my  pa's  real  wife — the  one  he  didn't 
live  with,  I  mean — was  originally  the  widow  of  a  well-to-do 
cheesemonger  ?  Polly  always  looked  up  her  nominal  granny 
when  we  played  Ireland.     She  likes  respectable  people." 

"  Is  that  why  she  won't  come  to  the  wedding  ?  "  Jinny  inquired 
cruelly,  for  Polly's  refusal  to  countenance  it  again  stirred  up  her 
doubts. 

Mr.  Flippance  was  angered  afresh.  "  I  tell  you,  my  Cleopatra 
can  hold  up  her  head  with  the  v/hitest  cheesemonger's  widow  in 
the  land.  But  it's  hard,"  he  said,  reverting  to  pathos  and 
flicking  his  cigar-ash  mournfully  into  the  just-dusted  shoe,  "  to 
be  left  without  a  daughter  at  such  a  crisis.  Think  how  she  would 
have  stage-managed  everything — even  bought  the  ring."  The 
tragedy  of  his  situation  mastered  him.  "  Forgive  my  emotion — 
I  was  always  one  to  wear  my  heart  on  my  sleeve."  He  wiped 
his  eyes  on  it  again.  "  Nobody  will  ever  pack  like  Polly.  Ah, 
thank  you,  ma,"  he  said,  as  Martha  reappeared  with  the  brandy 
bottle.  "  Have  you  half  a  crown  ?  "  he  added,  pouring  himself 
out  a  careless  quota.  "  You  see,"  he  explained,  setting  down 
his  glass  dolefully,  and  tendering  Martha's  half-crown  to  the 
astonished  Jinny,  "  though  old  pals  desert  one  at  the  altar,  Tony 
Flip  doesn't  forget  his  obligations." 

"  But  what's  it  for  ?  "     Jinny  took  the  coin  tentatively. 

"You  lent  me  it  when  that  wicked  Duke  demanded  money 
on  the  contract." 

"  Oh,  thank  you  1  "  Jinny  was  touched — a  half-crown  seemed 
as  large  as  her  cart-wheel  nowadays.  Half  remorsefully  she 
suggested  that  a  far  better  bridesmaid  would  be  the  girl  at 
Foxearth  Farm. 

He  shook  his  head.  "  I've  been  into  that.  But  there  are — 
objections.  It  doesn't  do,  you  see,  for  the  super  to  be  taller 
than  the  leading  lady.     Now  you  being  shorter " 

"  But  if  Miss  Jones  were  to  wear  very  low  heels- 


But  that  would  only  make  Miss  Purley  look  still  taller,"  he 
said,  puzzled. 

"  I  mean  Miss  Purley  to  wear  the  low  heels — she  is  a  Miss  Jones, 


too." 


"  What  ?  " 

"  Blanche  Jones  is  her  name — she's  only  old  Purley's  step 
daughter. 


390  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

He  started  up.     "  Then  Mrs.  Purley  was  formerly  Mrs.  Jones  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Hurrah  !  "  He  seized  the  surprised  Martha  by  the  waist 
and  began  waltzing  with  her,  while  Nip  barked  with  excite- 
ment. 

"  Quiet,  Nip  !     What's  the  matter  ?  "  cried  Jinny,  smiling. 

"  A  relation  at  last !  Don't  you  see  that  Mrs.  Jones  can  give 
the  bride  away  ?  " 

"  But  she's  not  really  a  relation." 

''  All  these  Joneses  are  one  large  family,"  he  said  airily, 

"  But  you  don't  need  a  relation,"  Martha  pointed  out.  "  A 
friend  will  do." 

"  Really  ?  I  must  study  the  stage-directions — I  mean,"  he 
corrected  himself  hastily,  "  yours  may  be  different  from  the 
Church  of  England." 

"  But  I  know  all  the  same,  for  we  weren't  allowed  to  marry  in 
our  own  chapels,  leastways  not  till  after  Willie  was  born." 

"  Well,  anyhow,  I'm  sure  Cleopatra  would  prefer  a  relation. 
Mrs.  Jones  is  a  Churchwoman,  I  hope.  It's  necessary,  ma,  you 
know,"  he  apologized. 

"  Yes — her  husband's  a  churchwarden,"  said  Jinny. 

"  A  churchwarden  i  Hurrah  !  Better  and  better.  Then  he 
shall  give  Cleo  away."  He  bumped  the  beaming,  breathless 
Martha  round  again. 

"  But  he  isn't  even  called  Jones,"  Jinny  reminded  him. 

"  A  husband  takes  over  his  wife's  Jonesiness.  Bless  you, 
Jinny  !  "  He  seized  her  hand  and  dragged  her  likewise  into  the 
circular  movement.  "  Now  we  go  round  the  mulberry-bush,  the 
mulberry-bush,  the  mulberry-bush " 

Caleb,  coming  past  the  door  at  this  instant,  stood  spellbound. 
Had  Mr.  Flippance  been  really  converted,  and  was  it  the  joy  of 
the  New  Jerusalem  ?  Or  had  Martha  now  "  moved  on,"  and 
was  this  the  new  dancing  sect  of  which  one  heard  rumours  ? 

Martha's  caperings  ceased  at  sight  of  him.  "  It's  the  wedding," 
she  said  somewhat  shamefacedly.  "  I'm  just  going  to  pickle 
your  walnuts,  dear  heart,"  she  added  sweetly.  "  And  Jinny 
must  be  getting  to  her  work,  too." 

At  which  delicate  hint.  Jinny,  faintly  flushing,  rose  to  take 
her  leave,  and  Nip,  who  had  been  whining  his  impatience,  was 
already  gambolling  hysterically  without,  before  she  remembered 
she  had  forgotten  the  very  purpose  of  her  visit. 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  391 

'^  Oh,  by  the  way,  Mr.  Flippance,"  she  said,  as  she  followed  Nip, 
"  I  suppose  the  wcdding-govvn  is  ordered." 

"  Wedding-gown  !  "  he  repeated.  "  You  don't  think  Cleo  has 
any  need  of  wedding-gowns  !  Why  the  Lady  Agnes  dress — 
Act  One — is  the  very  prop,  for  the  occasion,  and  brand  new,  for 
she  had  just  got  Duke  to  put  on  7 he  Mistletoe  Bough.  Otherwise 
I  should  have  been  asking  you  for  the  address  of  that  wonderful 
French  friend  of  yours — the  bearded  lady,  you  know.  But  if 
you  won't  be  a  bridesmaid,  you've  got  to  come  to  the  show — yes, 
and  the  wedding  breakfast  too — I  won't  take  any  refusal.  It'll 
be  at  Foxearth  Farm,  and  I'm  ordering  oceans  of  sweet  cham- 
pagne. Well,  thank  you  a  million  times  for  finding  Cleo  a 
father.  Good-bye,  dear.  God  bless  you  !  "  He  had  shuffled 
without  and  now  kissed  his  hand  to  the  moving  cart. 

"  What  about  a  new  wedding-gown  for  you  ?  "  Jinny  called 
back.     "  A  dressing-gown,  I  mean." 

"  Yumorist !  "  came  his  chuckled  answer. 


VIII 

Though  not  unconscious  of  a  subterranean  hostility  in  Martha, 
which  she  put  down  to  the  new  business  rivalry,  and  though  still 
perturbed  about  the  Duchess,  Jinny  felt  distinctly  better  for  this 
visit,  not  to  mention  the  half-crown,  that  now  rare  coin.  She 
was  still  more  heartened  two  days  later  when  Bundock  brought 
a  letter  from  Mr.  Flippance  stating  that,  strange  to  say,  Cleopatra 
did  not  find  the  Lady  Agnes  dress  suitable.  It  would  make  her 
feel  she  was  only  playing  at  marrying,  she  said,  and  she  was  too 
respectful  of  holy  matrimony  to  desecrate  it  by  any  suggestion 
of  unreality  :  indeed  she  was  already  being  fitted  by  the  leading 
Chipstone  artist.  The  dress  was,  however,  turning  out  so 
dubiously  that  she  would  be  glad  if  Jinny's  French  friend  would 
call  upon  her  at  Foxearth  Farm  with  a  view  to  preparing  a 
"  double."  As  for  Jinny  being  bridesmaid,  he  must  reluctantly 
ask  her  to  abandon  the  idea,  as  Cleopatra  considered  her  too 
sliort. 

"  That's  the  Flippance  fist,"  said  Bundock,  lingering  to  watch 
her  read  the  letter,  "  scrawls  all  over  the  shop.  I  don't  mind 
your  answering  by  post,"  he  added  maliciously,  "  now  I've  got 
to  go  there  so  much.  I  often  kill — he,  he,  he  ! — two  frogs  with 
one  stone  now.     So  you're  to  be  bridesmaid,  Tony  tells  me." 


392  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  Jinny,  "  and  mind  your  ovm 
business." 

"  It  is  my  business,"  he  said  in  an  aggrieved  tone.  "  Didn't 
he  ask  me  to  be  best  man  ?  As  if  in  this  age  of  reason  I  could 
take  part  in  superstitious  rites  !  " 

"  I  don't  see  any  superstition  about  marrying,"  said  Jinny. 

^'  I'm  not  so  sure — tying  a  man  to  a'  woman  like  a  dog  to  a 
barrel.     But  anyhow,  why  drag  in  heaven  ?  " 

"  Because  marriages  are  made  there,  I  suppose,"  said  Jinny. 

"  Stuff  and  nonsense  !  And  then  the  rice  and  the  old  shoes 
they  throw  !  " 

"  I  saw  yoii  throw  one  when  your  sister  got  married." 

"  Maybe.     But  I  didn't  beUeve  in  it." 

"  Then  why  did  you  throw  it  ?  " 

He  hesitated  a  moment.  "  They  say  if  you  don't  believe  in 
it,  it's  even  luckier  than  if  you  do." 

Jinny  laughed  heartily. 

"  I'm  not  joking  !  "  Bundock  declared  angrily. 

"  If  you  were,  I  shouldn't  be  laughing,"  said  Jinny. 

*'  Oh  well,  go  to  church  !  "  Bundock  retorted  in  disgust.  "  And 
I  hope  the  beadle  will  give  you  an  extra  prod  next  Sunday." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Don't  pretend.  Everybody  knows  that  church  is  a  double 
torture — first  the  parson  sends  you  to  sleep  with  his  sermon,  and 
then  the  verger  wakes  you  up  with  his  rod." 

Jinny  laughed  again. 

"  Don't  t^ll  me  !  "  said  Bundock.  "  My  own  father  was  forced 
to  go — all  the  labourers  on  the  estate,  poor  chaps,  dead-sleepy 
after  the  week's  work,  and  that  rod  used  to  puggle  'em  about.  No 
wdtider  dad  chucked  both  squire  and  parson." 

*'  It  doesn't  happen  in  Mr.  Fallow's  church,"  Jinny  assured  him. 

"  Because  nobody  goes  !  "  And  Bundock  hurried  off  with 
this  great  last  word,  and  Jinny  saw  his  bag  heaving  with  the 
mirthful  movement  of  his  shoulders. 

Somewhat  to  Jinny's  surprise.  Miss  Gentry  from  being  Cleo- 
patra's alternative  dressmaker  developed  into  her  adorer,  it 
appearing  that  the  lady  displayed  not  only  proportions  most 
pleasing  to  the  technical  eye — "  just  made  for  clothes,"  Miss 
Gentry  put  it — but  a  positive  appetite  for  tracts.  She  loathed 
Dissent,  it  transpired,  and  to  be  married  by  a  minister  would 
seem  to  her  little  better  than  living  in  sin.     A  very  paragon  of 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  393 

propriety  and  an  elegant  pillar  of  the  faith,  Miss  Cleopatra 
Jones,  spinster,  worshipped  regularly  with  the  churchwarden  and 
his  family  in  the  wrong  parish  church.  Miss  Gentry,  ravished 
by  this  combination  of  respectability  and  romance,  did  not  once 
compel  the  fair  client  to  attend  upon  her,  travelling  to  Foxearth 
Farm  instead  in  Jinny's  cart.  It  was  impossible  for  Jinny's 
doubts  of  Cleopatra's  immaculacy  to  survive  Miss  Gentry's 
encomiums.  While  Miss  Gentry  ascended  to  the  bedroom  of  her 
beautiful  and  still  golden-haired  client,  posed  in  an  atmosphere 
of  old  oak  bedsteads  and  panelled  linen  presses,  Jinny  would  sit 
with  the  second  Mrs.  Purley  in  her  dairy — a  cheerful,  speckless 
room  which  enjoyed  a  specially  spacious  window,  dairies  being 
immune  from  the  window-tax — ^while  that  bulkier  edition  of 
Blanche  made  cheeses  and  conversation.  Mrs.  Purley  made  con- 
versation irrespective  of  her  auditor,  for  she  needed  no  collabo- 
rator :  indeed  a  second  party  coming  athwart  this  Niagara  of 
monologue  would  have  been  swept  aside  like  a  straw. 

As  a  great  musician  can  take  a  few  simple  notes,  and  out  of  this 
theme  evoke  endless  intricacies,  enlargements,  repetitions,  echoes, 
duplications,  parallelisms,  and  permutations,  and  then  transform 
the  whole  into  another  key  and  give  it  you  all  over  again,  so  out 
of  a  simple  happening,  like  her  feeding  of  a  sick  chicken,  or  her 
discovery  that  a  hen  had  laid  her  clutch  in  the  hedge,  Mrs. 
Purley,  without  for  a  moment  interrupting  the  milling  of  curd 
or  the  draining  of  whey,  could  improvise  a  fugal  discourse  that 
went  ramifying  and  returning  upon  itself  ad  infinitum.  It 
reminded  Jinny  of  Kelcott  Wood,  where  every  day  from  three 
to  five,  on  these  September  afternoons,  hundreds  of  starlings, 
perched  like  bits  of  black  coal  on  the  mountain-ashes,  kept  up 
a  ceaseless  chattering,  shrilling,  clucking,  querying,  cackling. 

But  she  soon  ceased  to  hear  Mrs.  Purley,  was  even  lulled  by  the 
cascade.  Very  familiar  grew  every  pan,  dipper,  vat,  tub,  press, 
cheese-cloth,  or  straw-mat,  while  the  one  readable  article'  she 
knew  by  heart.  It  was  the  inscription  on  a  china  mug,  in  which 
Mrs.  Purley  sometimes  put  milk,  and  it  recorded  the  virtues  of 
a  black-haired,  black-whiskered  head  painted  thereon.  "  The 
Incorruptible  Patriot.  .  .  .  The  Undaunted  Supporter  of  the 
People's  Rights.  .  .  .  The  Father  of  the  Fatherless.  .  .  .  The 
Pride  and  Glory  of  his  Country.  .  .  .,"  such  were  a  few  of  the 
attributes  ascribed,  with  a  profuseness  resembhng  Mrs.  Purley's 
conversation,  to  a  certain  Henry  Brougham,  Esq.,  who,  as  Jinny 


394  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

learnt  from  Miss  Gentry,  was  really  and  truly  "  a  love,"  having 
defended  Queen  Caroline  when  Miss  Gentry  was  a  schoolgirl. 
Queens  were  as  liable  to  ill-luck  as  herself,  Jinny  began  to  suspect, 
recalling  that  Egyptian  asp,  and  she  became  a  little  anxious  for 
Victoria,  who  now  came  to  figure  in  her  dreams,  as  defended 
against  French  fire-eaters  by  this  black-avised  man,  with  the 
protruding  nose,  retreating  forehead,  and  weak  chin.  Somehow 
— it  was  unintelligible  when  she  woke  up,  but  quite  clear  in  her 
dream — the  defended  Victoria  was  also  herself,  for  was  not 
Henry  Brougham  "  The  Father  of  the  Fatherless  "  ? 

Adjoining  the  dairy  was  a  room,  lit  from  it — to  avoid  taxation 
— by  a  pane  in  the  door.  Jinny  sometimes  had  an  uneasy  sense 
that  Blanche  was  inspecting  her  through  that  pane.  Otherwise 
she  hardly  ever  encountered  the  vespacide,  who  betrayed  indeed 
no  sense  of  rivalry,  for  the  relations  between  Will  and  the  little 
Carrier  were  unknown,  and  Blanche  would,  in  any  case,  have 
considered  so  humble  a  personage  negligible  or  at  least  nippable. 

For  if  this  handsome  creature  was — as  she  had  struck  Jinny — 
a  shade  overripe,  it  was  not  for  lack  of  volunteer  pluckers,  and 
the  mutability  which  Mr.  Giles  Purley  had  gently  derided  in  his 
son  had  been  even  more  marked  in  his  stepdaughter.  Fortunately 
Will  was  unaware  of  the  episodes  that  had  preceded  his  return 
to  England.  And  not  only  did  he  regard  himself  as  the  first 
male  that  had  ever  squeezed  that  fair  hand,  but,  untaught  by 
its  prowess  as  a  wasp-killer,  he  believed  her  a  passive  victim  to 
his  own  compelling  charm.  And  the  apparent  perfection  of 
Blanche's  surrender  was  the  more  grateful  to  him  after  the 
granite  he  had  kept  striking  in  Jinny.  But  the  mobility  which 
had  hitherto  marked  Miss  Blanche's  affections  was  now  manifest- 
ing itself  in  a  novel  shape,  for  like  Miss  Gentry,  she  had  come 
under  the  spell  of  Cleopatra,  though  a  very  different  Cleopatra 
from  the  ardent  Churchwoman  who  revealed  herself  to  the  dress- 
maker. The  Cleopatra  who  magnetized  the  cheese-maker's 
daughter,  and  who,  carelessly  abetted  by  Mr.  Flippance's  sketchy 
promises,  filled  the  ignorant  girl  with  dramatic  and  palpitating 
ambitions,  was  a  queen  of  the  footlights,  an  inspirer  of  romantic 
passions,  and  in  her  unguarded  moments — as  when  you  sat  on 
her  bed  at  midnight  with  your  hair  down — a  teller  of  strange 
Bohemian  stories,  a  citer  of  perturbing  Sapphic  songs,  the 
melodies  of  which  she  could  even  whistle.  What  wonder  if  Mrs. 
Hemans— Blanche's  favourite  poet  hitherto — began  to  pall !     She 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  395 

had  been  proud  enough  of  her  culture,  leaving,  as  she  felt  it  did, 
the  parental  perspectives  far  behind  her  ;  but  now  boundless 
horizons  seemed  opening  up  before  her,  and  the  London  Journal 
which  Cleopatra  swallowed  wdth  her  meals  seemed  to  Blanche  to 
contain  nothing  so  alluring  as  Cleopatra's-  own  career. 

It  was  by  quite  accidentally  overhearing  a  remark  of  Blanche's, 
and  not  by  dint  of  Mr.  Flippance's  repeated  invitation,  that 
Jinny  was  finally  strung  up  to  attend  the  great  wedding.  The 
probability  that  Will  and  Blanche  would  be  at  the  feast  was  a 
drawback  that  prevailed  over  the  lure  of  a  good  square  meal, 
and  even  over  the  glamour  of  that  mysterious  nectar — cham- 
pagne. But  when  she  heard  Blanche  instruct  her  mother  that 
she  would  certainly  not  have  tx>  lay  a  place  for  "  that  common 
carrier,"  in  a  flame  that  might  almost  have  consumed  her  letter- 
paper,  Jinny  wrote  her  acceptance  to  Mr.  Flippance,  and  expended 
his  half-crown,  which  she  had  laid  by  for  a  rainy  day,  on  a 
wedding  present  which  would  do  him  good — a  Bible,  to  wit. 

In  prevision  of  the  great  day  she  left  off  wearing  her  best 
gown,  cleaned  it,  and  by  the  aid  of  Miss  Gentry  and  a  bit  of  lace 
gave  it  a  new  turn.  After  the  wedding  it  must,  alas,  be  pa\^Tied  ! 
Jinny,  though  she  had  hitherto  entered  the  pawnshop  only  to 
pledge  or  redeem  things  for  her  customers,  had  schooled  herself 
to  the  inevitable.  So  had  Mr.  Flippance,  whose  idea  of  a  best 
man  had  now  sunk  to  Barnaby.  But  he  was  used  to  handling 
unpromising  performers,  he  said,  though  he  regretted  the  absence 
of  a  dress  rehearsal,  more  especially  for  Mrs.  Purley,  who,  having 
been  induced  to  mother  Cleopatra  (nothing  would  induce  Mr. 
Purley  to  father  her),  was  unlikely,  he  feared,  to  confine  herself 
to  a  simple  "  I  do."  That  was  not,  he  groaned  drolly,  her 
idea  of  a  speaking  part.  He  deplored,  too,  that  there  were  not 
enough  bells  or  bell-ringers  in  the  Little  Bradmarsh  church  to 
ring  an  elaborate  joy-peal,  as  Cleopatra  was  so  anxious  to  have 
every  property  and  accessory  of  holy  matrimony  complete.  It 
was  for  this  reason,  doubtless,  that  Miss  Gentry,  after  reducing 
the  rival  dress  to  a  rag,  ultimately  emerged  as  the  bridesmaid. 


IX 

For  the  convenience  of  Foxearth  Farm,  as  well  as  of  Will,  who, 
though  a  bit  sulky  about  his  mother's  waiting  on  the  Showman, 
was  too  entangled  with  Miss  Purley  to  refuse  to  grace  the  festal 


396  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

board,  the  ceremony  had  been  fixed  for  a  Saturday  at  ten,  and 
on  that  morning  Jinny  had  meant  to  rise  with  the  sun,  so  as  to 
do  the  bulk  of  her  day's  chares  in  advance.  What  was  her 
dismay,  therefore,  to  open  blinking  eyes  on  her  grandfather 
standing  over  her  pseudo-bed  in  his  best  Sunday  smock,  whip  in 
hand,  and  to  hear  through  her  wide-flung  casement  Methusalem 
neighing  outside  and  the  cart  creaking  ! 

"  Am  I  late  ?  "  she  gasped,  sitting  up.  Then  she  became 
aware  of  a  beautiful  blue  moonlight  filling  the  room  with  glory, 
and  of  a  lambent  loveliness  spreading  right  up  to  the  stars 
sprinkled  over  her  slit  of  sky. 

"  'Tis  your  wedding-day,  dearie,"  said  the  ghostly  figure  of  the 
Gaffer,  and  she  now  perceived  there  were  wedding  favours  on  his 
whip,  evidently  taken  from  Methusalem's  May  Day  ribbons, 
which  he  must  have  hunted  out  of  the  "  glory-hole  "  where  odds 
and  ends  were  kept. 

Bitterly  she  regretted  having  excited  his  brain  by  informing 
him  of  her  programme.  He  was  evidently  prepared  to  drive  her 
to  the  ceremony. 

"  But  it's  too  early,"  she  temporized. 

"  Ye've  got  to  be  there  for  breakfus,  you  said,  dearie,"  he 
reminded  her. 

"  No,  no,"  she  explained.  "  The  wedding  breakfast  with 
fashionable  folk  is  onlv  a  sort  of  bever  or  elevener  at  earliest." 

^ 

He  chuckled.  "  Ye're  gooin'  to  be  rich  and  fashionable — 
won't  it  wex  that  jackanips !  Oi  suspicioned  'twas  you  he  war 
arter  the  fust  time  he  come  gawmin'  to  the  stable.  Ye  can't 
deceive  Daniel  Quarles.  On  your  hands  and  knees,  ye  pirate 
thief  !  "  He  cracked  his  whip  fiercely.  "  Up  ye  git.  Jinny, 
ye've  got  to  titivate  yerself.  Oi've  put  the  water  in  your 
basin." 

"  But  Gran'fer,"  she  said,  acutely  distressed,  "  it's  not  my 
wedding." 

"  Not  your  wedding  !  " 

"  Of  course  not." 

"  Then  whose  wedding  be  it  ?  "  he  demanded  angrily.  "  'Tain't 
mine,  seein'  as  Oi'm  too  poor  to  keep  Annie  though  she's  riddy  of 
her  rascal  at  last."  He  seized  her  wrists  and  shook  her.  "  Why 
did  you  lie  to  me  and  make  a  fool  o'  me  ?  " 

So  this  was  why  Gran'fer  had  embraced  her  so  effusively  last 
night  when  she  avowed  her  programme  for  the  morrow;    this 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  397 

was  why  he  had  given  her  blessings  in  lieu  of  the  expected 
reproaches  for  her  projected  absence  ;  this  was  why  he  had  gone 
up  to  bed  humming  his  long-silent  song  :  "  Oi'm  seventeen  come 
Sunday." 

It  was  a  mistake,  she  felt  now,  to  have  stayed  at  home  for  his 
sake  on  the  Friday,  changing  the  immemorial  day  of  absence. 
He  had  been  strange  all  day,  without  grasping  what  was  the  cause 
of  his  unrest,  and  Nip's  parallel  uneasiness  had  reacted  upon 
him.  It  was  not,  however,  till  she  had  incautiously  remarked 
that  Methusalem  too  was  off  his  feed,  that  he  cried  out  in  horror 
that  she  had  forgotten  to  go  on  her  rounds.  Smilingly  she 
assured  him  she  had  not  forgotten  :  indeed  the  void  in  her  whole 
being  occasioned  by  the  loss  of  Mother  Gander's  gratis  meal  had 
been  a  gnawing  reminder  since  midday.  But  imagining — and 
not  indeed  untruly — that  her  work  was  gone,  he  had  burst  into 
imprecations  on  "  the  pirate  thief." 

As  she  sat  up  now  on  her  mattress,  helpless  in  her  grief,  her 
mind  raced  feverishly  through  the  episode,  recalling  every  word 
of  the  dialogue,  unravelling  his  senile  misapprehension  ;  half 
wilful  it  seemed  to  her  now,  in  his  eagerness  to  clutch  at  happier 
times. 

"  It's  nothing  to  do  with  the  coach  competition,  Gran'fer.  It's 
only  because  I've  got  to  be  out  to-morrow  for  a  wedding  !  " 

"  A  wedding  !     She  ain't  marrying  agen  ?  " 

"  Who  ?  " 

"  Annie." 

"  Annie  ?     Which  Annie  ?  " 

"  There's  onny  one  Annie.     'Lijah's  mother." 

"  Old  Mrs.  Skindle  !  What  an  idea  !  It's  a  friend  of  mine,  a 
gentleman  you've  never  seen." 

At  this  point  she  had  had,  she  remembered,  the  fatal  idea  of 
showing  him  her  furbished-up  frock  to  soothe  him,  for  he  was 
trembling  all  over. 

"  Would  you  Hke  to  see  what  I'm  going  to  wear  ?  " 

She  understood  now  the  new  light  that  had  shot  into  his  eye 
as  he  touched  the  lace  trimming. 

"  Similar-same  to  what  your  Great-Aunt  Susannah  wore  the 
day  she  married  that  doddy  little  Dap  !  -  Ye  ain't  a-gooin'  to 
make  a  fool  o'  yerself  similar-same.  Who's  the  man  ?  "  he  had 
demanded  fiercely. 

"  You  don't  know  him,  I  told  you — it's  a  Mr.  Flippance  !  " 


398  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

A  beautiful  peace  had  come  over  the  convulsed  face.  "  Flip- 
pance  !  Ain't  that  the  gent  what's  come  to  live  in  Frog  Farm  ? 
That's  a  fust-class  toff,  no  mistake.  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  should  be 
tellin'  me,  when  he  come  with  the  watercress  on  Tuesday,  as 
Mr.  Flippance  pays  a  pound  a  week  for  hisself  alone  !  " 

That  was  the  point  at  which  her  grandfather  had  kissed  her 
Avith  effusion,  crying  :  "  Ye'll  be  in  clover,  dearie  !  "  while  she, 
licking  her  chaps  at  the  thought  of  the  morrow's  banquet,  had 
playfully  answered  that  there  would  certainly  be  "  a  mort  to 
eat."     The  prospect  set  him  clucking  gleefully. 

"  Spite  o'  that  rapscallion  !  "  he  had  chuckled,  enlarging  there- 
upon to  her  on  the  way  the  Lord  protects  His  righteous  subjects, 
and  enlivening  his  discourse  with  adjurations  to  "  the  pirate 
thief  "  to  take  to  his  hands  and  knees.  Had  followed  reproaches 
for  hiding  the  news  from  him,  reproaches  to  Mr.  Flippance  for 
not  calling  on  him,  not  even  inviting  him  to  the  wedding  :  sooth- 
ing explanations  from  her  that  Mr.  Flippance  knew  he  was  too 
poorly  to  go  that  far  ;  assurances  she  would  be  back  as  early  as 
possible. 

She  ought  to  have  understood  his  delusion  or  self-delusion,  she 
thought,  when  he  had  clung  to  her  in  a  sudden  panic. 

"  Then  ye  will  come  back — ye  ain't  leavin'  me  to  starve  !  Ye 
won't  let  that  jackanips  starve  me  out  ?  " 

And  when  she  had  reassured  him,  and  caressed  him,  even 
promised  to  bring  him  something  tasty  from  the  wedding  break- 
fast, he  had  gripped  her  harder  than  ever — she  could  still  feel 
his  bony  fingers  on  her  wrist — but  of  course  they  actually  were 
on  her  wrists  as  she  sat  there  now  against  her  pillow — "  ye'll  live 
here  with  me — same  as  afore  !  " 

"  Why  ever  shouldn't  I  ?  "  she  had  answered  in  her  innocence. 
"  We'll  always  live  with  you — ^Methusalem,  Nip,  all  of  us." 
What  unlucky  impulse  of  affection  or  reassurance  had  made  her 
stoop  down  to  kiss  the  dog  in  his  basket — all  her  being  burnt 
with  shame  at  the  remembrance  of  her  grandfather's  reply, 
though  at  the  time  it  had  touched  her  to  tears. 

"  God  bless  ye.  Jinny.  Oi  know  this  ain't  a  proper  bedroom 
for  you,  but  Oi'll  sleep  here  if  you  like,  and  do  you  and  he  move 
up  to  mine." 

She  had  put  by  the  offer  gently.  "  Nonsense,  Gran'fer,  You 
can't  shift  at  your  age — or  Nip  either." 

"  Oi  bain't  so  old  as  Sidrach,"  he  had  retorted,  not  without 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  399 

resentment,  "  and  Oi  doubt  he  aint  left  off  bein'  a  roUin'  stone. 
And  Oi  reckon  Oi  can  fit  into  that  chest  of  drawers  better  than 
when  Oi  was  bonkka." 

But  the  shrivelled  form,  with  the  hollow  cheeks,  flaming  eyes, 
and  snowy  beard,  was  still  shaking  her  angrily,  and  her  sense  of 
his  pathos  vanished  in  a  sick  fear,  not  so  much  for  herself,  though 
his  fingers  seemed  formidably  sinister,  as  for  his  aged  brain 
under  this  disappointment.  "  Why  did  you  say  'twas  your 
wedding  morn  ?  " 

The  Dutch  clock,  providentially  striking  three,  offered  a  fresh 
chance  of  temporizing. 

"  There,  Gran'fer  !  Can't  be  my  wedding  morn  yet,  only  three 
o'clock!" 

He  let  go  her  hands.  ^'  Ain't  ye  ashamed  to  have  fun  with 
your  Gran'fer  ?  "  he  asked,  vastly  relieved.  "  But  it's  a  middlin' 
long  drive  to  Chipstone  before  breakfus." 

"  It's  not  at  Chipstone — the  wedding's  at  Little  Bradmarsh." 

"  Oh  !  "  he  said  blankly. 

"  So  there's  lots  of  time,  Gran'fer,  and  you  can  go  back  to  bed." 

"  Not  me  !     Do,  Oi  mightn't  wake  in  time  agen." 

"  I'll  wake  you — but  I'll  be  fit  for  nothing  in  the  morning,  if 
I  don't  go  to  sleep  now." 

"  The  day  Oi  was  married,"  he  chuckled,  "  Oi  never  offered  to 
sleep  the  noight  afore — ne  yet  the  noight  arter !     He,  he  !  " 

"  Go  away,  Gran'fer  !  "  she  begged  frantically.  "  Let  me  go 
to  sleep." 

"  Ay,  ay,  goo  to  sleep,  my  little  mavis.  Nobody  shan't 
touch  ye.  What  a  pity  we  ate  up  that  wedding-cake  1  But  Oi 
had  to  cut  a  shiver  to  stop  his  boggin'  and  crakin',  hadn't  Oi, 
dearie  ?  " 

''  Quite  right.  Better  eat  wedding-cake  than  humble-pie !  " 
she  jested  desperately. 

"  Ef  he  conies  sniffin'  around  arter  you're  married,  Oi'U  snap 
him  in  two  like  this  whip  !  " 

"  Don't  break  my  whip  !  "  She  clutched  at  the  beribboned 
butt. 

"  That's  my  whip.  Jinny  !     Let  that  go  !  " 

"  Well,  go  to  bed  then  !  "  With  a  happy  thought,  she  lit 
the  tallow  candle  on  her  bedside  chair  and  tendered  it  to  him.  It 
operated  as  mechanically  upon  his  instinctive  habits  as  she  had 
hoped. 


400  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Good  night,  dearie,"  he  said,  and  very  soon  she  heard  him 
undressing  as  usual,  and  his  snore  came  with  welcome  rapidity. 
Then  she  sprang  out  of  bed,  pulled  on  some  clothes,  and  ran  out 
to  release  the  angry  and  mystified  Methusalem  from  the  shafts 
and  to  receive  his  nuzzled  forgiveness  in  the  stable.  But  when 
she  got  back  to  bed,  sleep  long  refused  to  come  ;  the  sense  of  her 
tragic  situation  was  overwhelming.  Even  the  great  peace  of  the 
moonlit  night  could  not  soak  into  her.  It  was  impossible  to  go 
to  the  wedding  now,  she  felt.  When  at  last  sleep  came,  she  was 
again  incomprehensibly  Queen  Victoria  hemmed  in  by  foes,  and 
protected  only  by  "  The  Father  of  the  Fatherless  "  with  his 
black  whiskers.  She  awoke  about  dawn,  unrefreshed  and 
hungry,  but  a  cold  sponging  from  the  basin  her  grandfather  had 
prepared  enabled  her  to  cope  with  the  labours  of  the  day.  She 
looked  forward  with  apprehension  to  the  scene  with  the  old  man 
when  he  should  realize  that  the  grand  match  was  indeed  off,  but 
she  could  think  of  nothing  better  than  going  about  in  her  dirtiest 
apron  to  keep  his  mind  off  the  subject.  The  precaution  proved 
unnecessary.  He  slept  so  late  and  so  heavily — as  if  a  weight 
was  off  his  mind — that  when  he  at  last  awoke  he  seemed  to  have 
slept  the  delusion  off,  as  though  it  were  something  too  recent  to 
remain  in  his  memory.  As  for  the  scene  in  the  small  hours,  that 
had  apparently  left  no  impress  at  all  upon  his  brain.  In  fact,  so 
jocose  and  natural  was  he  at  breakfast,  which  she  purposely 
made  prodigal  for  him,  that  the  optimism  of  the  morning  sun, 
which  came  streaming  in,  almost  banished  her  own  memory  of 
it  too  :  it  seemed  as  much  a  nightmare  as  her  desperate  struggle 
against  the  foes  of  Victoria- Jinny.  The  lure  of  the  wedding 
jaunt  revived,  and  the  thought  of  the  domestic  economy  she 
would  be  achieving  thereby,  made  her  sparing  of  her  own  break- 
fast. She  had  a  bad  moment,  however,  when  her  grandfather 
suddenly  caught  sight  of  the  horseless  cart  outside. 

"  Stop  thief  !  "  he  cried,  jumping  up  agitatedly. 

Jinny  was  vexed  with  herself.  To  have  left  that  reminder  of 
the  grotesque  episode  ! 

''  It's  that  'Lijah  !  "  he  shrieked.     "  He's  stole  Methusalem." 

"  Hush,  Gran'fer  !  "  she  warned  him.  "  Suppose  anybody 
heard  you  !  " 

But  he  ran  out  towards  the  Common  and  she  after  him.  Plis 
tottering  limbs  seemed  galvanized. 

"  My  horse  is  all  right,"  she  gasped,  catching  him  up  in  a  few 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  401 

rods.  "  I  was  too  tired  yesterday  to  put  my  cart  away,  that's 
all." 

He  turned  and  glared  suspiciously  at  her.  "  That's  my  hoss — 
and  my  cart,  too  !  Can't  you  read  the  name — '  Daniel  Quarles, 
Carrier.'  But  ye  won't  never  let  me  put  no  padlock  on  my 
stable  !  " 

"  Your  horse  is  there  safe — come  and  see  !  " 

He  allowed  himself  to  be  led  to  the  soothing  spectacle. 

"  But  Oi'll  put  a  padlock  at  once,  same  as  in  my  barn,"  he 
said  firmly.  "  Don't,  that  rascal  'Lijah  will  grab  him  without 
tippin'  a  farden  !  " 

X 

The  overlooked  cart  proved  a  blessing,  not  a  calamity,  for  the 
operation  of  padlocking  the  stable-door  before  the  horse  was 
stolen  so  absorbed  the  Gaffer  that  Jinny  found  it  possible,  after 
all,  to  don  her  finery  and  slip  off  to  the  wedding  unseen  even  of 
Nip,  who  was  supervising  the  new  measures  for  Methusalem's 
safety.  Curiosity  to  see  Miss  Gentry's  creation  in  action  had 
combined  with  the  pangs  of  appetite  and  her  acceptance  of  the 
invitation  to  make  temptation  irresistible,  and  she  calculated 
that  she  could  be  back  by  noon,  and  that,  pottering  over  his 
vegetable  patch  or  his  Bible,  the  old  man  would  scarcely  notice 
her  absence. 

When  she  reached  the  church,  she  found  the  coach  stationed 
outside,  and  though  the  liveried  guard  was  lacking  to-day,  the 
black  horses  looked  handsomer  than  ever  with  their  red  wedding- 
favours,  while  the  pea-green  polish  of  the  vehicle  reduced  her  to 
a  worm-like  humility  at  the  thought  of  the  impossibility  of  her 
cart  taking  part  in  to-day's  display.     Evidently  Will  had  brought 
the  bridegroom  from  Frog  Farm.     Out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye 
she  espied  Will  himself,  sunning  himself  on  his  box,  and  her 
heart  thumped,  though  all  she  was  conscious  of  was  the  insolent 
incongruity  of  his  pipe  with  the  occasion,  the  edifice,  his  new 
frock-coat,  and  the  posy  in  its  buttonhole.     Fearing  she  was  late, 
she  hurried  into  the  church.     But  nothing  was  going  on,  though 
the   size   of   the   congregation — far  larger  than   usual — was   an 
exciting  surprise.     There  was  no  sign  of  any  of  the  wedding- 
party,  not  even  Mr.  Flippance,  and  after  imperceptibly  saluting 
her  Angel-Mother,  she  sank  back  into  a  rear  pew,  half  pleased  to 
have  missed  nothing,  half  uneasy  lest  there  be  a  delay.     Turn- 

2  c 


402  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

ing  over  a  Prayer  Book  in  search  of  the  Wedding  Service,  she 
came  for  the  first  time,  and  not  without  surprise,  on  the  Fifth 
of  November  Thanksgiving  "  for  the  happy  deliverance  of 
King  James  I  and  the  Three  Estates  of  Englani  from  the  most 
traiterous  and  bloody-intended  massacre  by  Gunpowder :  And  also 
for  the  happy  Arrival  of  King  William  on  this  Day,  for  the  Deli- 
verance of  our  Church  and  Nation."  King  William's  arrival  struck 
her  as  providential  but  confusing — for  though  he  had  apparently 
detected  the  Popish  barrels  in  the  nick  of  time,  how  came  there  to 
be  two  kings  at  once  ?  Suddenly  she  w^as  aware,  by  some  tingling 
telegraphy,  that  the  bride  and  bridesmaid  had  arrived  outside 
in  a  grand  open  carriage.  Mr.  Fallow  in  his  surplice  came  in  at 
the  clerk's  intimatioi^i  and  took  up  his  position  at  the  altar  rails, 
the  musicians  struck  up  "  The  Voice  that  Breathed  o'er  Eden," 
and  then  there  was  a  sudden  faltering,  and  a  whispering  took 
place  'twixt  parson  and  clerk,  and  Mr.  Fallow  was  swallowed 
again  by  his  vestry,  while  the  clerk  disappeared  through  the 
church  door.  It  was  realized  that  Mr.  Flippance  was  not  in  the 
church,  and  it  was  understood  that  the  bride's  face  was  being 
saved  in  the  vestry,  where,  however,  as  time  passed,  the  agitated 
congregation  divined  hysterics. 

Jinny — thinking  of  her  neglected  grandfather — was  what  he 
called  "  on  canterhooks."  Had  Mr.  Flippance  not  then  come  in 
the  coach,  had  he  been  carelessly  left  in  bed  as  usual  ?  Catching 
her  Angel-Mother's  eye,  she  received  a  distinct  injunction  to  go 
out  in  search  of  him,  but  she  was  too  shy  to  move  in  the  presence 
of  all  those  people,  though  she  had  a  vision  of  herself  frantically 
harnessing  Methusalem  and  carting  the  bridegroom  to  church  in 
his  dressing-gown — would  carpet  slippers  be  an  impediment  to 
matrimony,  she  wondered.  Mr.  Fallow  came  in  again,  looking  so 
worried  that  she  recalled  an  ecclesiastical  experience  he  had  related 
to  her  :  how  one  of  his  parishioners,  nowadays  a  notorious  Hot 
Gospeller,  had  "  found  religion  "  on  the  very  verge  of  setting  out 
to  be  married,  and  had  passed  so  much  time  on  his  knees,  absorbed 
in  the  newly  felt  truth,  that  it  was  only  through  his  friend  the 
bell-ringer  stopping  the  church  clock  that  he  was  married  by 
noon ;  if  indeed — a  doubt  which  ever  after  weighed  on  Mr. 
Fallow — ^he  was  legally  married  at  all.  What  if  at  this  solemn 
moment  of  his  life  Mr.  Flippance  should  similarly  find  re- 
ligion !  She  devoutly  hoped  the  discovery  would  be  at  least 
delayed  till  he  was  safely  married.     Good  heavens  !   perhaps  the 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  403 

Bible  she  had  given  him  was  in  fault !  Perhaps  she  was  respon- 
sible for  his  rapt  remissness.  Disregarding  the  congregation's 
eyes,  she  went  boldly  into  the  vestry. 

Here,  sure  enough,  she  found  the  heroine  of  the  day  supported 
by  a  trio  of  ladies.  The  outstanding  absence  of  Mr.  Flippance 
left  Jinny  but  a  phantasmagoric  sense  of  a  bride,  still  composed 
indeed,  but  so  ghastly  that  despite  her  glamour  of  veil-folds  and 
orange-blossom  she  scarcely  looked  golden-haired ;  of  a  brides- 
maid hardly  recognizable  as  Miss  Gentry,  for  the  opposite  reason 
that  it  was  she  with  her  swarthy  splendour,  opulent  bosom,  and 
glory  of  silk  and  flowers  who  seemed  the  Cleopatra  ;  of  a  Blanche 
so  appallingly  queenly  in  her  creamier  fashion  under  the  art  of 
the  rival  dressmaker,  that  her  own  cleaned  gown  seemed  but  to 
emphasize  her  shabbiness  and  dowdiness.  Acoustically  the 
voice  of  Mrs.  Purley  expatiating  on  the  situation  was  the  dominant 
note,  but  through  and  beneath  the  cascade  Jinny  was  aware  of 
Miss  Gentry  explaining  to  the  bride  that  the  horses  which  had 
brought  the  bridegroom  w^ere  not  responsible  for  his  disappear- 
ance. Not  unpropitious,  but  of  the  finest  augury  were  these 
sable  animals,  omens  going  by  contraries.  So  they  had  brought 
Mr.  Flippance  ! 

They  were  tossing  their  bepranked  heads.  Jinny  found,  and 
champing  their  bits,  as  if  sharing  in  the  human  unrest.  Will  was 
no  longer  smoking  placidly  on  his  box,  but  in  agitated  parley 
with  Barnaby  and  his  father.  She  heard  the  inn  suggested,  and 
saw  the  Purleys  posting  towards  it.  She  herself  ran  round  to 
the  tower,  fantastically  figuring  Mr.  Flippance  on  his  knees  on 
the  belfry  floor  amid  the  ropes  and  the  cobwebs,  but  even  the 
one  bell-ringer  seemed  to  have  sallied  in  search  of  the  bridegroom, 
or  at  least  of  the  inn. 

The  churchyard  was  large  and  rambling  and  thickly  populated 
— pathetic  proof  there  had  been  life  in  the  church  once — and  it 
was  in  a  sequestered  corner  behind  a  tall  monument  that  Jinny 
with  a  great  upleap  of  the  heart  at  last  espied  the  object  of  her 
quest,  though  he  seemed  even  more  unreal  than  Miss  Gentry  in 
his  narrow-brimmed  top-hat,  satin  stock  with  horseshoe  pin,  and 
swallowtail  coat,  while  his  face  was  as  white  as  his  waistcoat, 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?  "  came  involuntarily  to  her  lips. 

"  Reading  the  tombstones,"  he  said  wistfully.     "  So  peaceful !  " 

"  But  they're  waiting  for  you  !  " 

"  They're  waiting  for  everybody.     That's  the  joke  of  it  all." 


404  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

*'  I  don't  mean  the  gravestones." 

"  Look  !  There's  a  French  inscription.  And  that  name  must 
be  Flemish,  see  !  " 

"  I  haven't  time  !  " 

"  Why,  what  have  you  got  to  do  ?  " 

"  I  mean,  you  haven't  got  time.     It's  your  wedding  !  " 

"  Don't  rub  it  in  !  What  long  grass  !  So  we  go  to  grass — all 
of  us.     Thanks  for  your  Bible,  by  the  way  !  " 

So  her  apprehensions  had  been  right.  It  was  religion  that  was 
bemusing  him. 

"  So  glad  you  like  it.  Come  along  !  "  she  said  in  rousing 
accents. 

"  All  flesh  is  grass,"  he  maundered  on.  "  And  rank  grass  at 
that !  " 

"  It's  only  thick  here  because  they  can't  mow  this  bit," 
she  explained.  "  Too  many  tombs  !  "  She  plucked  at  his 
sleeve. 

"  So  it's  hay  we  run  to  !  "  he  said,  disregarding  her  "  O 
Lord  !     Mr.  Fallow's  tithes,  I  suppose." 

"  Well,  why  waste  good  hay  ?     He's  waiting  for  you." 

"  Well,  he'^s  got  plenty  of  time  by  all  accounts." 

"  I  mean,  she'^s  waiting,"  she  cried,  in  distress. 

"  Is  she  there  already  ?  Look  at  that  bird  cracking  its  snail 
on  the  gravestone." 

"  It's  an  early  bird — youHl  be  late." 

"  Don't  worry.  Tony  Flip  never  missed  his  cue  yet.  Funny, 
isn't  it,  how  it  all  comes  right  at  night — especially  with  Polly 
there  !     Perhaps  she^ll  come,  if  we  give  her  a  little  time." 

"  But  have  you  invited  her  ?     Does  she  know  ?  " 

"  If  she  don't,  it's  not  for  want  of  telegrams  to  every  possible 
address." 

"  But  she  may  be  in  Cork,  you  said.  You  can't  keep  the  bride 
waiting. 

"  She  shouldn't  have  come  so  early — it's  the  first  time  I've 
known  her  punctual.     The  early  bird  catches  the  snail,  eh  ?  " 

"  But  it's  half-past  ten  !  And  there's  a  crowd  too — I  don't 
know  where  they  all  come  from.     Come  along  !  " 

"  One  can't  consider  the  supers  !  " 

''  Well,  consider  me  then.     I've  got  to  get  back  to  Gran'fer  !  " 

"  The  true  artist  always  has  stage-fright.  Jinny.  Give  me  a 
moment.     I'll  be  on  soon." 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  405 

^'  All  right."  She  was  vastly  relieved.  "  Have  you  got  the 
ring  ?  " 

"  Tony  Flip  never  forgets  a  property.  See  !  "  And  whisking 
it  suddenly  out  of  his  waistcoat  pocket,  he  seized  her  left  hand 
and  slipped  it  on  her  gloved  wedding-finger.  "  That's  where  it 
ought  to  be,  Jinny  !  " 

She  pulled  it  off,  outraged,  and  flung  it  from  her. 

"  On  your  wedding  day,  too  !  "  she  cried. 

"  Now  it's  lost,"  he  said  cheerfully,  "  and  the  bearded  brides- 
maid will  have  to  go  home  with  the  unblushing  bride." 

"  You  ought  to  have  given  it  to  Barnaby,"  she  said. 

Anxious  and  remorseful,  she  went  on  her  knees,  groping 
feverishly  in  the  long  grass.  "  On  your  hands  and  knees  "  kept 
sounding  irrelevantly  in  her  brain.  Mr.  Flippance  watched  her 
like  a  neutral.  "  I'd  forgotten  that  the  woman  runs  away  with 
the  piece,"  he  explained  to  her  distracted  ear.  "  I  thought 
marriage  was  a  show  with  two  principals.  But  if  there's  got  to 
be  a  leading  lady,  why  not  stick  to  Polly  ?  " 

"  You  should  have  thought  of  that  before,"  she  murmured. 

"  Correct  as  Polonius,  Jinny.  Even  when  I  get  the  theatre, 
it'll  only  be  hell  over  again.  Why  couldn't  I  stick  to  the 
marionettes  ?  I  charge  thee  fling  away  ambition,-  Jinny — by 
that  sin  fell  the  angels.     But  you've  only  flung  away  my  ring." 

"  Here  it  is  !  "     She  pounced  joyfully. 

"  Just  my  luck  !  "     He  took  it  ruefully. 

"  I  thought  you  said  she  was  so  pure  and  wonderful !  "  she 
reminded  him. 

He  winced.  "  That  wouldn't  prevent  her  bullying  me,"  he 
replied  somewhat  lamely. 

"  What  about  the  taming  of  the  shrew  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  By  Jove  !  You're  right.  Jinny  !  Petruchio's  the  game  ! 
Whips  and  scorpions,  what  ?  "  His  face  took  on  a  little  of  its 
old  colour.  "  It's  getting  up  so  early  that  has  upset  me.  Aitex 
all,  Jinny,  a  lovely  woman  who  loves  you  and  puts  all  her  money 
on  you  isn't  to  be  picked  up  every  day." 

"  Of  course  not.     Anyhow  it's  too  late  to  change  now." 

"  Don't  say  that  !  As  if  I  didn't  want  to  change  before  there 
was  anything  to  change — oh,  you  know  what  I  mean." 

"  It's  too  late  now  !  "  she  repeated  firmly.  She  stood  over 
him,  a  stern-faced  little  monitor  of  duty.     "  Come  along  1  " 

"  Go  ahead — the  rose-wreathed  victim  w^ill  be  at  the  altar." 


4o6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

They  moved  on  a  little.  He  paused  as  with  sudden  hopeful- 
ness. "  You  don't  happen  to  know  if  there's  a  great  oak  chest 
with  a  spring  lock  in  Foxearth  Farm  ?  " 

"  How  should  I  know  ?  "  she  murmured,  apprehensive  now  for 
his  reason. 

He  sighed.  "  Well,  never  mind — it'll  all  be  all  right  at  night. 
And  what's  it  all  for,  anyhow  ?  '  Wife  of  the  above,'  "  he  read 
out  weirdly.     "  How  they  cling  on  !  " 

But  Jinny  had  gone  off  into  a  reverie  of  her  own.  The  tomb- 
stone formula  he  had  recited  struck  a  long-buried  memory,  and 
in  a  flash  she  saw  again  a  quiet  graveyard  and  a  stone  behind  a 
tumbledown  tower,  and  Commander  Dap's  black-gloved  fore- 
finger tracing  out  her  mother's  epitaph  to  a  strange  solemn  little 
girl.  All  the  wonder  and  glamour  of  childhood  was  in  that 
flash,  all  the  strangeness  of  life  and  time,  and  her  eyes  filled  with 
tears.  When  the  mist  cleared  away,  Mr.  Flippance  was  gone. 
She  ran  frantically  around  among  the  tombs  like  a  sheep-dog  till 
at  length  the  sound  of  Mr.  Fallow's  ecclesiastical  voice  floated 
out  to  her,  and  hurrying  back  into  the  church,  she  felt  foolish 
and  tranquillized  to  find  the  service  well  forward. 


XI 

Jinny  had  misread  Mr.  J  Fallow's  look  :  it  was  not  fear  of 
dragging  on  beyond  the  legal  hour — noon  was  still  too  remote — 
but  impatience  at  being  kept  away  from  his  antiquarian  lore  by 
such  trifles  as  matrimony,  especially  matrimony  which  was  no 
longer,  as  in  pre-Reformation  days,  preceded  by  the  Holy  Com- 
munion and  symbolic  of  the  union  of  Christ  and  His  Church. 
Had  there  been  a  care-cloth  to  be  thrown  over  the  couples'  heads, 
such  as  existed  in  Essex  churches  in  1550,  even  matrimony  might 
have  interested  him.  But  as  it  was,  his  thoughts  ran  on  old 
cheeses.  He  had  been  comparing  his  Latin  edition  of  Camden's 
"Britannia"  (1590)  with  the  two- volume  folio  translation,  a 
century  later,  by  a  worthy  bishop,  and  was  half  scandalized,  half 
excited,  to  find  that  the  translator  had  introduced  a  wealth  of 
new  matter.  Incidentally  Mr.  Fallow  had  learned  the  Hundred 
was  celebrated  for  its  huge  cheeses — inusitatce  magnitudinis — of 
ewes'  milk,  and  that  to  make  them  the  men  milked  the  ewes  like 
women  elsewhere.  And  these  huge  cheeses  were  consumed  not 
only  in  England,  but  exported — ad  saturandos  agrestes  et  opifices 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  407 

— "  to  satisfie  the  coarse  stomachs  of  husbandmen  and  labourers," 
as  the  bishop  put  it.  When  had  this  manufacture  of  giant 
cheeses  from  ewes'  milk  died  out  in  Essex  ?  Mr.  Fallow  had 
already  seized  the  opportunity  of  interrogating  Mrs.  Purley, 
whose  3'eputation  as  a  cheesemaker  had  reached  him.  But 
appalled  by  the  voluminousness  of  her  ignorance,  he  had  taken 
sanctuary  in  his  church  and  was  still  brooding  over  the  problem 
as  his  lips  framed  the  more  trivial  interrogatories  of  the  ceremony. 

For  Jinny,  however,  it  was  a  thrilling  moment  when  Mr.  Fallow 
lackadaisically  called  upon  the  couple  "  as  ye  will  answer  at  the 
dreadful  Day  of  Judgment  "  to  avow  if  they  knew  any  impedi- 
ment to  their  lawful  union.  That  in  face  of  so  formidable  a 
threat  neither  came  out  with  "  Mr.  Duke,"  though  she  still  half 
expected  him  to  pop  up  in  person  from  the  void,  was  for  her 
sweet  stupidity  the  final  proof  of  the  bride's  immaculacy.  And 
the  whole  service  she  thought  beautiful  and  moving,  having 
missed  the  gross  beginning  thereof.  She  was  startled  to  hear 
the  bridegroom  addressed  by  Mr.  Fallow  as  Anthony,  and  the 
bride  with  equal  familiarity  as  Bianca  Cleopatra.  Otherwise  the 
ceremonial  seemed  far  too  highflown  for  this  terrestrial  twain, 
though  somehow  not  at  all  transcending  the  relationship  in 
which  her  own  soul  could  stand  towards  its  spiritual  comrade. 
But  the  replies  of  the  three  principals  came  all  in  unexpected 
wise.  Mr.  Flippance's  "  I  will  "  was  so  ready  and  ringing,  and 
his  countenance  so  rosy,  that  Jinny  wondered  which  was  the 
actor — the  Flippance  of  the  churchyard  or  the  Flippance  of  the 
church.  The  ex-Duchess,  on  the  other  hand,  still  pallid,  faltered 
her  affirmation  almost  in  a  whisper,  at  any  rate  it  w^as  not  so 
loud  as  his  comment :  "  I've  told  you  always  to  speak  sharp  on 
your  cue."  Certainly  no  husband  could  ever  have  asserted 
himself  at  an  earlier  moment — ^was  he  perhaps  already  following 
Jinny's  hint,  or  was  it  only  the  stage-manager  responding 
mechanically  to  stimulus  ?  As  for  Mrs.  Purley,  she  showed  even 
more  stage-fright,  her  "  I  do  "  failing  even  as  a  gesture,  and 
having  to  be  prompted.  "  Too  small  a  speaking  part  for  her," 
commented  Tony  later,  with  a  twinkle. 

When  everything  was  over  and  the  register  signed  and  Barnaby, 
breaking  down  under  the  weight  of  his  financial  duties,  had  wished 
the  bride  many  happy  returns — a  felicitation  only  dispelled  by 
his  father  saluting  her  as  "  Mrs.  Flippance  " — that  now  reassured 
lady,  sweeping   regally  to  her  carriage,  her  train  over  one  arm 


4o8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

and  her  husband  over  the  other — smiled  at  the  admiring  avenue 
of  villagers  and  small  boys  as  though  they  had  thrown  her  the 
bouquet  she  held.  When  Mr.  Flippance,  gay  and  debonair,  had 
handed  Mrs.  Flippance,  looking  golden-haired  again,  into  their 
barouche,  and  been  driven  oif  with  the  hood  up  and  his  beautiful 
doll  beside  him.  Jinny  perceived  Will  handing  the  gorgeously 
gowned  Blanche  with  parallel  ceremoniousness  into  the  coach, 
where  the  transmogrified  Miss  Gentry  was  already  installed 
behind  the  bulwark  of  her  great  bouquet.  And  then  Jinny  became 
aware  of  Barnaby  hovering  shyly  between  her  and  the  trap 
which  held  his  parents,  and  indicating  dumbly  that  the  niche 
vacated  by  his  sister  was  now  for  her.  She  had  a  sudden  feeling 
that  they  did  not  want  her  in  the  coach  beside  those  grand  gowns 
hunched  out  with  starched  petticoats.  As  if  she  would  have  set 
foot  in  it  1  No,  not  for  all  the  gowns  in  the  world  !  But  they 
were  right,  she  thought  bitterly — what  had  she  to  do  with  all 
this  grandeur  and  happiness  ?  The  honeymoon  was  even  to  be 
in  Boulogne,  she  had  gathered.  And  she  heard  some  force, 
welling  up  from  the  dark  depths  of  herself,  cry  to  Barnaby  :  '^  I 
can't  come — I'm  so  sorry.  But  Gran'fer  was  upset  in  the  night. 
Please  excuse  me  to  Mr.  Flippance." 

At  this  the  bitterness  passed  from  her  soul  to  poor  Barnaby's. 
Everybody  was  pairing  off  :  the  Flippances,  his  parents,  Will 
and  his  sister  :   there  was  nobody  left  for  him  but  Miss  Gentry. 

"  But  there'll  be  oysters  as  well  as  dumplings,"  he  pleaded. 
"  Will  brought  them  from  Colchester." 

Jinny's  famished  interior — in  making  such  a  skimpy  breakfast 
it  had  counted  on  the  wedding  meal — seconded  his  plea  des- 
perately. But  the  mention  of  Will  was  fatal.  As  a  hermit's  sick 
fantasy  conjures  up  the  temptation  he  knows  he  will  resist,  so 
Jinny  saw  yearningly,  vividly,  but  hopelessly,  the  spread  banquet, 
the  dumplings  soused  in  gravy,  the  brown  bread  and  butter  for 
the  oysters,  the  juicy  meats,  the  mysterious  champagne-bottles, 
the  sunny  napery,  the  laughing  festival  faces,  and,  above  all,  the 
curly  aureole  of  Will's  hair. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  she  repeated  veraciously. 

In  a  panic  the  youth  ran  after  the  receding  barouche.  "  Jinny 
won't  come,"  he  gasped. 

"  Don't  stop,  coachman,"  said  Mrs.  Flippance  sharply. 

"  Tell  her,"  called  back  Mr.  Flippance,  "  she  must — or  I'U 
never  ask  her  to  my  wedding  again  !  " 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  409 

Poor  Barnaby  tore  back  to  the  coach.  "  I  say,  Miss  Gentry, 
you're  a  friend  of  Jinny's — do  make  her  come." 

"  A  friend  of  Jinny's  !  "  It  was  an  even  unkickier  remark 
than  the  reference  to  Will.  A  patron,  an  educator,  an  interpreter 
of  herbs  and  planets,  gracious  and  kindly,  who  might  even — in 
private — admit  the  little  Carrier  to  confidences  and  Pythian 
inspirations,  yes.  But  a  friend  ?  How  came  Mr.  Flippance  to 
commit  such  2.  faux  fas  as  to  bring  a  carrier  into  equality  with 
her  and  Blanche  ?  Why  had  not  the  adorable  Cleopatra  been 
firmer  wdth  the  man  ?  "  I  can't  order  her  to  come,"  she  reminded 
Barnaby  majestically.     "  It's  not  like  for  a  parcel." 

As  the  horses  tossed  their  wedding-favours  and  the  coach 
jingled  off  with  its  fashionable  burden,  even  the  trap  moving  on 
under  the  stimulus  of  Mrs.  Purley's  rhetoric,  the  whole  scene 
became  a  blur  to  Jinny,  and  standing  there  by  the  old  pillion- 
steps,  she  felt  herself  dwindled  into  a  little  aching  heart  alone  in 
a  measureless  misery.  How  tragic  to  be  cut  off  from  all  this 
gay  eating  and  drinking  !  There  was  almost  a  voluptuousness 
in  the  very  poignancy  of  her  self-mutilation.  What  a  blessing 
we   all   do   run   to  hay,  she  brooded,  in  a  warm  flood  of  self- 

But  if  Jinny  thus  saw  the  w^edding-guests  through  a  blur  of 
self-torturing  bitterness,  their  feast  did  not  begin  as  merrily  as 
she  beheld  it,  despite  that  Mrs.  Purley,  as  soon  as  she  had 
exchanged  her  bonnet-cap  with  the  net  quilting  for  a  home  cap, 
served  up  unexpected  glasses  of  gin.  Anthony,  no  less  than 
Barnaby,  was  upset  by  Jinny's  absence,  and  Cleopatra  resented 
this  fuss  over  a  super.  But  still  more  disgruntled  by  the  gap  at 
the  table  was,  odd  to  say,  Will.  For  his  soul  had  not  been  so 
placid  as  his  pipe.  The  glimpses  he  had  caught  of  Jinny  were 
perturbing.  Overpowering  as  were  the  presences  of  the  bride 
and  Blanche,  or  rather,  precisely  because  they  were  overpowering, 
they  struck  him  as  artificial  by  the  side  of  this  little  wild  rose 
with  her  w^oodland  flavour,  and  the  memory  of  their  afternoon 
in  the  ash-grove  came  up  glowing,  touched  as  with  the  enchant- 
ment of  its  bluebells.  Blanche,  for  her  part,  w^as  peevish  at 
Will's  taciturnity.  Miss  Gentry,  still  rankling  under  Barnaby 's 
suspicion  that  she  was  the  Carrier's  bosom  friend,  was  particularly 
down  upon  that  youth's  naive  attempt  to  confine  the  conversa- 
tion to  Jinny,  though  it  confirmed  her  suspicion  of  the  state  of 
things  between  those  two.     Mr.  Purley  in  his  turn  had  been 


410  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

dismayed  by  Blanche's  fineries  :  the  young  generation  forgot 
that  their  fathers  were  only  farmers  compelled  to  take  lodgers  in 
bad  seasons.  Thus  it  was  left  to  Mrs.  Purley  to  sustain  almost 
the  whole  burden  of  conversation.  But  her  preoccupation  with  her 
little  serving-maid  and  the  kitchen,  plus  her  uneasiness  at  eating 
in  this  grand  room  away  from  her  hanging  hams  and  onions, 
interposed  intervals  of  silence  even  in  her  prattle,  and  the  theme 
of  her  facetious  variations — her  fear  in  church  that  the  bride- 
groom had  bolted — did  not  add  to  the  general  cheeriness.  The 
old  wainscoted  parlour,  with  its  rough  oak  beams  across  the  ceiling, 
had  seldom  heard  oysters  swallowed  with  gloomier  gulps. 

Fortunately  the  pop  of  the  sweet  champagne  brought  a 
note  of  excited  gaiety  into  the  funereal  air,  and  glass -clinking 
and  looking  to  one  another  and  catching  one  another's  eye  were 
soon  the  order  of  the  early- Victorian  day.  Mr.  Flippance, 
acknowledging  the  toast  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  did  not 
fail  to  thank  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Purley  for  the  precious  treasure  they 
had  solemnly  entrusted  to  his  unworthy  hands,  a  being  whose 
beauty  equalled  her  brains,  and  whose  virtue  her  genius.  Mr. 
Purley  deprecatingly  murmured  "  Don't  mention  it,"  meaning 
of  course  his  share  in  the  production  of  this  prodigy,  but  Mrs. 
Purley,  fresh  from  her  church  role,  began  to  feel  that  she  had 
dandled  Cleopatra  in  her  arms.  In  replying  for  himself  and  his 
"  good  wife  " — for  the  age  assumed  that  Mrs.  Purley  could  not 
speak — Mr.  Purley  could  not  wish  the  newly  married  couple 
anything  better  than  to  be  as  happy  as  they  had  been.  "  Literally 
'  a  good  v/ife,'  eh  ?  "  interlarded  Tony  genially.  "  None  better," 
asseverated  Mr.  Purley.  "  I'm  close,  but  she's  nippy."  "  You're 
thinking  of  Blanche,"  Barnaby  called  out  gaily,  through  the 
laughter.  "  I  don't  say  as  your  mothers  nippy  in  words,"  Mr. 
Purley  corrected,  with  a  twinkle.  He  went  on  to  wish  as  much 
happiness  to  all  the  unmarried  people  present,  at  which  Miss 
Gentry  giggled  and  markedly  avoided  Barnaby's  eye ;  while 
Will,  reconciled  to  fate  several  glasses  ago,  squeezed  Blanche's 
hand  under  the  table.  Even  when  Mr.  Purley,.  becoming  a  little 
broad,  referred  to  the  time  when  his  "  good  wife "  had  first 
ventured  into  "  The  Hurdle-Maker's  Arms,"  Miss  Gentry  joined 
in  the  hilarity.  Her  passion  for  the  church-going  Cleopatra  had 
convinced  her  that  the  stage  was  not  necessarily  of  the  devil — 
The  Mistletoe  Bough,  she  had  found,  was  only  the  same  story 
that  had  been  written  as  a  poem  ("  Ginevra  ")  by  a  Mr.  Rogers, 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  411 

who,  she  had  gathered,  was  a  most  respectable  banker,  and  she 
was  looking  forward  to  her  Mistress-ship  of  the  Robes  at  the 
coming  Theatre  Royal,  and  even  to  witnessing  her  darling's 
debut  as  Lady  Agnes  from  the  front.  Several  hysterical  em- 
braces had  already  passed  between  her  and  the  bride — somewhat 
to  Blanche's  jealousy — and  all  things  swam  before  her  in  a  rosy 
mist  as  she  now  pulled  a  cracker  with  Mr.  Purley  and  read 
unblushingly  ; 

''  When  glass  meets  glass  and  Friendship  quaffs^ 
From  lip  to  lip  His  Love  that  laughs  !  " 

a  motto  which  caused  the  hurdle-maker  to  remark  that  it  was 
lucky  his  "  good  wife  "  had  left  the  room. 

That  loquacious  lady  had  fallen  strangely  silent.     The  wine 
which  had  loosened  all  the  other  tongues  seemed  to  have  con- 
stricted hers.     Perhaps  it  was   merely  the  already  mentioned 
preoccupation  with  her  pies  or  other  dishes  still  in  the  oven.     Or 
perhaps  it  was  the  encounter  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  with 
a  great  rival  tongue.     It  consorted  with  this  latter  hypothesis 
that  she  could  be  heard  babbling  now  from  her  kitchen  like  a 
cricket  on  the  hearth,   and  her  elaboration  of  a   temperature 
theme    came    distractingly    across    the   larger   horizons    of   Mr. 
Flippance's     discourse,     playing    havoc    with    his    account    of 
Macready's  Farewell  at  Drury  Lane  that  March,  and  obscuring 
the  moral  of    the    vacant    succession.     Charles  Kean  ?     Pooh  ! 
Not  a  patch  on  his  father.     Had  they  seen  hini  in  Dion  Bouci- 
cault's  new  play  at  the  Princess's,  Love  in  a  Maze  ?     No  ?     Then 
before  voting  for  Charles  Kean  he  would  advise  them  to  go — or, 
rather,  not  to  go.     He  had  never  denied  the  merits  of  the  manager 
of    Sadler's    Wells    especially    as    Sir    Pertinax    Macsycophant, 
though  he  knew  his  young  friencl  Willie  preferred  Mr.  Phelps  in 
Othello,     "  I  say  whom  the  mantle  fits,  let  him  wear  it,"  summed 
up  Mr.  Flippance  oracularly,  and  launched  into  an  exposition 
of  how  he  would  run  "  The  National  Theatre."     No  Miss  Mitford 
tragedies  for  him  with  Macreadys  at  thirty  pounds  a  week,  still 
less  Charles  Kean  Hamlets  at  fifty  pounds  a  night,  but  real  plays 
of  the  day — he  did  not  mean  the  sort  of  things  they  did  at  the 
Surrey,  which  were  no  truer  to  life  than  the  repertory  of  the 
marionettes,   but  why  not,    say,   the   Chartist    movement    and 
the  forbidden  demonstration  on  Kennington  Common  ?     Or  let 
Mr.  Sheridan  Knowles,  instead  of  talking  his  Baptist  theology  at 


412  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Exeter  Hall,  write  a  "  No  Popery  "  play,  with  Cardinal  Wiseman 
as  the  villain.  (Hear,  hear!  from  Miss  Gentry.)  Of  course 
there  was  the  danger  the  censor  would  quash  such  plays  as  he 
had  quashed  even  Miss  Mitford's  Charles  the  First,  but  then  he, 
Mr.  Flippance,  knew  old  John  Kemble,  and  would  undertake  to 
persuade  him  that  tim.es  had  changed. 

Mrs.  Flippance,  who  had  displayed  some  restiveness  under  the 
long  appraisal  of  male  talent,  displayed  yet  more  when  Mr. 
Flippance  was  now  provoked  to  rapturous  boyish  memories  of 
the  censor's  sister,  Mrs.  Siddons.  But  Blanche  and  Barnaby 
listened  so  spellbound  that  they  ceased  finally  to  hear  their 
mother's  inborne  monologue  at  all. 

It  was  at  this  literally  dramatic  moment  that  Bundock 
appeared  at  the  banquet  with  the  explanation  that  nobody 
would  answer  his  knocking,  and  tendered  the  bridegroom  a  pink 
envelope  which  he  had  benevolently  brought  on  from  Frog  Farm 
on  his  homeward  journey.  Miss  Gentry,  unused  to  these  bomb- 
shells, uttered  a  shriek,  which  more  than  ever  riveted  the  post- 
man's eyes  on  her  flamboyant  efflorescence. 

"  Steady  !  Steady  !  "  said  Tony,  opening  the  telegram  with 
unfaltering  fingers.  "  Take  some  more  fizz.  And  give  brother 
Bundock  a  glass." 

He  read  the  fateful  message,  and  the  anxious  watchers  saw 
strange  thoughts  and  feelings  passing  in  lines  across  his  forehead, 
and  in  waves  across  the  folds  of  his  flabby  clean-shaven  jowl. 
TPien  his  emotions  all  coalesced  and  crashed  into  laughter,  noisy, 
but  not  devoid  of  grimness.  "  Listen  to  this  !  "  he  cried.  "  '  Sin- 
cere condolences.     Married  Polly  this  morning.     Duke.''  " 

Mrs.  Flippance  turned  scarlet.  "  He's  marfied  Polly  !  "  she 
shrieked.     "  The  beast !     The  insulting  beast !  " 

"  Easy  !  Easy  1  "  said  the  bridegroom  to  this  second  per- 
turbed female.  "  It  isn't  him  Polly's  married — it's  his  mario- 
nettes. Chingford,  the  telegram  is  marked.  I  expect  the 
caravan  is  honeymooning  in  Epping  Forest.     Give  me  Boulogne." 

But  nobody  was  listening  to  him  any  longer.  The  hysterics 
that  had  been  only  a  rumour  in  church  became  a  reality  now. 
Miss  Gentry  had  produced  salts  for  her  darling  and  was  calling 
for  burnt  feathers,  and  Blanche  and  Barnaby,  tumbling  over  each 
other  kitchenwards,  only  set  their  mother's  tongue  clacking 
fortissimo.  Even  Mr.  Purley  was  slapping  the  bride's  hands  as 
she  shrieked  on  the  sofa — he  was  deeply  moved  by  her  convul- 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  413 

having  seen  a  doll  in  distress.  Bundock  alone 
remained  petrified,  the  empty  champagne-glass  in  his  hand,  his 
eyes  still  glned  on  Miss  Gentry,  and  the  bubbles  in  his  veins 
re-evoking  that  effervescence  of  the  Spring  in  which  even  a  rear- 
ward consciousness  of  green  mud  had  not  availed  to  blunt  the 
charm  of  opulent  beauty.  Through  the  tohubohu  Mr.  Flippance 
calmly  scribbled  a  counter-telegram  :  "  Congratulations  on  your 
marriage.     Condolences  to  Polly. '''^ 

"  Pity  we  ain't  got  some  of  that  Scotch  stuff  to  quiet  her,"  said 
the  agitated  hurdle-maker. 

"  Whisky,  do  you  mean  ?  "  said  Tony. 

"  No,  no  !     That  new  stuff  they  should  be  telling  of — discovered 
by  that  Scotch  doctor — puts  you  to  sleep,  like,  and  onsenses  you." 
"  Oh,  chloroform  !  "  said  Tony. 

"  Ay,  that's  the  name.  Masterous  stuff  for  females  to  my 
thinking." 

"  So  it  is,  I  understand."  Mr.  Flippance  sm.iled  faintly.  "  But 
not  for  cases  like  this." 

"  The  parsons  won't  let  you  use  it !  "  Bundock  burst  forth. 
"  They  say  it's  against  religion.  I  suppose  they  want  the 
monopoly  of  sending  you  to  sleep."     He  sniggered  happily. 

"  /'//  chloroform  her,"  Mr.  Flippance  murmured.  He  could 
well  understand  Cleopatra's  fury  at  being  replaced  by  a  w^oman 
so  superficially  unattractive  as  dear  Polly,  especially  as  she 
herself,  catching  at  any  stage  career  in  her  impecunious  days, 
had  not  even  been  married  by  the  fellow. 

"  Can  you  read  my  writing,  Bundock  ?  "  he  asked  loudly, 
proceeding  to  read  to  him  in  stentorian  tones  as  if  from  the 
telegram.  "  Polly,  care  of  Duke's  Marionettes,  Chingford. 
Come  home  at  once  and  all  shall  be  forgotten  and  forgiven. 

Your  heart-broken " 

But  Mrs.  Flippance  was  already  on  her  feet  and  the  telegram 
in  fragments  on  the  floor.  "  I  won't  have  her  here  !  "  she  cried. 
''  You've  got  to  choose  between  us  !  " 

"  My  darling  !  Who  could  hesitate  ?  Try  a  little  gin,"  He 
hovered  over  her  tenderly.  *'  Take  dov/n  a  different  reply,  Bun- 
dock, please."     He  dictated  the  message  he  had  really  written. 

"  Condolences  to  Polly  !  "  repeated  Mrs.  Flippance,  smiling 
savagely.  "  I  should  think  so.  I  doubt  if  he  has  even  legally 
married  her." 

"  Oh,  trust  Polly  for  that  !     She's  got  her  head  square  on." 


414  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

At  this  Mrs.  Flippance  showed  signs  of  relapse. 

"  Poor  Polly  !  "  said  Tony  hastily.  "  Fancy  her  being  tied  to 
a  man  like  that !  " 

"  I  don't  know  that  she  could  have  done  much  better,"  snorted 
Mrs.  Flippance. 

"  But  fancy  Polly  being  wasted  on  a  man  who  packs  for 
himself  !     Another  glass,  Bundock  ?  " 

"  Not  while  I'm  on  the  Queen's  business,  thank  you,"  said  the 
postman. 

"  But  you're  not.     Aren't  your  letters  delivered  ?  " 

"  What  about  your  telegram  ?  " 

"  True,  true.  O  Bundock,  what  a  sense  of  duty  !  You  recall 
us  to  ours.  We  must  drink  to  the  Queen  !  The  Queen,  ladies 
and  gentlemen "  he  filled  up  Bundock's  glass. 

"  I  can't  refuse  to  drink  that,"  sniggered  Bundock.  "  Won- 
derful what  one  day's  round  can  bring  forth  !  "  he  said,  putting 
down  his  glass.  "  I  began  with  a  baby — I  mean  the  midwife 
told  me  of  one — ^went  on  to  a  corpse — and  now  here  am  I  at  a 
wedding !  It's  in  a  cottage  by  the  holly-grove — the  corpse,  I 
mean " 

"  We  don't  want  the  skeleton  at  the  feast,"  interrupted  Tony. 
Bundock  hastened  to  turn  the  conversation  to  the  grand  new 
house  Elijah  Skindle  was  building — Rosemary  Villa. 

Blanche  pouted  her  beautiful  lips  in  disgust :  "  Don't  talk  of 
a  knacker — that's  worse  than  a  corpse." 

But  Bundock  was  anxious  to  work  off  that  Elijah  called  his 
house  "  Rosemary  Villa  "  because  rosemary  was  good  for  the 
hair,  and  having  achieved  this  stroke,  prudently  departed  before 
the  laughter  died.  Blanche  seemed  especially  taken  with  his 
gibe  at  that  poor  grotesque  Mr.  Skindle. 

After  his  departure,  flown  with  stuff  for  scandal  and  witticism, 
headier  to  him  than  the  wine,  the  party  grew  jollier  than  ever. 
They  played  Pope  Joan  with  mother-o'-pearl  counters  and  then 
Blanche  sang  "  Farewell  to  the  Mountain,"  by  ear,  like. a  bird, 
without  preliminary  fuss  or  instrum.ental  accompaniment,  and 
Mr.  Flippance  crying  *^  Encore  !  "  and  "  Bis  1 "  spoke  significantly 
of  the  possibility  of  including  an  annual  opera  season  in  English 
in  his  Drury  Lane  repertory.  Why  should  Her  Majesty's  Theatre 
and  the  Italian  tongue  have  a  monopoly  ?  Ravished,  Blanche 
gave  "  The  Lass  that  Loves  a  Sailor,"  her  eyes  languishing,  and 
this  led  Mr.  Purley  on  to  dancing  the  old  Essex  hornpipe,  whose 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  415 

name  sounded  like  his  own,  with  Barnaby  banging  a  tray  for  the 
tambourine  and  Will's  throat  replacing  the  melodeon.  To  Miss 
Gentry,  beaming  in  Christian  goodwill  upon  the  merry  company, 
it  appeared  strangely  multiplied  at  moments.  But  the  more  the 
merrier  ! 

When  the  happy  pair  had  departed  for  Boulogne  via  the 
Chipstone  barouche,  what  wonder  if  Will,  finding  himself  alone 
in  the  passage  with  Blanche,  and  not  denied  a  kiss,  felt  his  last 
hesitations  deliciously  dissolved.  Hov/  restful  to  absorb  this 
clinging  femininity,  this  surrendered  sweetness !  With  '  what 
almost  open  abandonment  she  had  sung  "  The  Lass  that  Loves 
a  Sailor"  at  him,  with  what  breaking  trills  and  adoring  glances! 
Marriage  was  in  the  air — two  examples  of  it  had  been  brought 
to  his  ken  in  one  morning — and  he  now  plumply  proposed  a 
third.     A  strange  awakening  awaited  him. 

Blanche  grew  suddenly  rigid.  Her  imagination  had  already 
been  inflamed  by  Cleopatra,  clinging  to  whose  aromatic  skirts 
she  saw  herself  soaring  to  a  world  of  romance  and  mystery.  She 
had  swallowed  credulously  the  exuberant  play  of  Mr.  Flippance's 
fantasy  round  her  feats  of  wasp-killing,  and  was  willing  to  do 
even  that  on  the  stage  if  it  enabled  her  soles  to  touch  the  sacred 
boards.  In  her  daydreams  Will  had  already  begun  to  recede. 
But  now  that  Mr.  Flippance  had  discovered  a  voice  in  her  too, 
and  operatic  vistas  opened  out  under  his  champagne  and  his  no 
less  gaseous  complim.ents,  she  could  not  suddenly  sink  to  the 
comparative  lowliness  of  a  box-seat.  That  song  which  Will  had 
taken  for  the  symbol  of  her  submission  was  really  the  final 
instrument  of  his  humiliation. 

Rejected  by  the  girl  who  has  snuggled  into  one's  heart,  evoked 
one's  protective  emotions,  exhibited  herself  all  softness  and 
sweetness  !  It  was  incredible  !  He  did  not  know  whether  he 
was  more  angry  or  more  ashamed,  and  he  was  tortured  by  this 
warm,  creamy,  scented  loveliness  which  a  moment  before  had 
seemed  under  his  palms  to  mould  as  he  would,  and  was  now 
become  baffling,  polar,  and  remote. 

"  Blanche  !  Blanche  !  "  he  cried,  trying  to  retain  her  hand, 
and  tears  actually  rolled  down  his  cheeks.  But  underneath  all 
the  storm  he  heard  a  still  small  voice  crying  :  "  Jinny  !  Jinny  1 
Jinny!" 

So  he  had  been  saved  from  this  fatuous  marriage,  from  this 
supple,    conceited   minx  with  her  imitative   scents   and   mock 


4i6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

graces.  The  genuine  simple  rosebud  of  a  Jinny  was  waiting, 
waiting  for  him  all  the  time,  the  Jinny  round  whose  heart  his 
own  heart-strings  had  been  twined  from  mysterious  infancy,  who 
touched  him  like  the  song  of  "  Home,  Sweet  Home,"  heard  when 
miserable  in  Montreal,  the  darling  lovable  little  Jinny  as  pretty 
as  she  was  merry,  no  real  exemplar  of  the  unmaidenly,  only  a 
dutiful  supporter  of  her  grandfather  and  his  business,  at  most  a 
bit  unbalanced  by  her  mannish  role  ;  Jinny  the  girl  with  the 
brains  to  appreciate  him,  and  whom  he  alone  could  appreciate 
as  she  deserved  !  How  wonderful  were  the  v/ays  of  Providence  ! 
How  nearly  he 'had  been  trapped  and  caged  and  robbed  of  her  ! 

^*  I  don't  see  what  you  mean  by  leading  a  fellow  on  !  "  he 
reproached  Blanche  hoarsely,  with  no  feigned  sense  of  grievance, 
as  he  gazed  at  the  mocking  mirage  of  her  loveliness.  But  imder- 
neath  the  tears  and  the  torment,  his  heart  seemed  to  have  come 
to  haven. 

"  Jinny  !  "  it  sang  happily.     "  Jinny  !     Jinny  !     Jinny  !  '' 

XII 

On  ariiving  home.  Jinny's  first  thought  after  giving  the 
GaflFer  his  dinner  and  swallowing  a  few  mouthfuls  to  overcome 
her  faintness — her  mood  of  self-torture  would  not  allow  more — 
was  to  give  Methusalem  some  oats  extracted  by  stratagem  from 
the  old  man's  padlocked  barn.  She  had  scraped  together  a  few 
handfuls  and  was  bearing  them  towards  his  manger  in  a  limp 
sack  when  she  perceived  that  the  stable-door  was  open  and 
gave  on  a  littered  emptiness.  Her  heart  stood  still  as  before  the 
supernatural.  True,  the  new  padlock  was  clawing  laxly  at  its 
staple  as  if  forced  open,  but  then  it  had  not  been  there  at  all  till 
that  very  morning,  and  for  Methusalem  to  leave  his  stable 
voluntarily  was  as  unthinkable  as  for  a  sheep  to  abandon  a 
clover-field.  Yet  there  stretched  the  bare  space,  looking  por- 
tentously vast.  What  had  happened  ?  She  ran  round  the  little 
estate,  as  though  Methusalem  would  not  have  bulked  on  the 
vision  from  almost  any  point,  and  then  she  peered  anxiously 
over  the  Common,  as  if  he  could  be  concealed  among  the  gorse 
or  the  blackberry-bushes.  The  hard  ground  of  the  road,  marked 
only  by  the  dried-up  ruts  of  her  own  wheels,  gave  no  indication 
of  his  hoofs.  It  flashed  upon  her  that  padlocks  were  after  all 
not   so   ridiculous,    but   examining   more   closely   the   one   that 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  417 

drooped  by  the  stable-door,  she  saw  that  its  little  key  was  still 
in  it.  Evidently  the  old  man  had  forgotten  to  turn  it.  The 
cart  was  still  in  its  shed,  looking  as  dead  to  her  now  as  a  shell 
without  its  snail,  though  the  image  was  perhaps  a  little  too  hard 
on  Methusalem. 

But  to  alarm  her  grandfather  before  she  had  made  a  thorough 
search  would  only  confirm  him  in  his  delusions.  Peeping  through 
the  casement  of  the  living-room,  she  was  relieved  to  see  and  hear 
him  at  the  table,  safely  asleep  on  his  after-dinner  Bible.  With 
his  beard  thus  buried  in  the  text,  he  might  sleep  for  hours  in  the 
warmth  and  buzzing  silence.  Lucky,  she  thought,  as  she  tip- 
toed past,  that  he  had  not  made  the  discovery  himself.  He 
would  probably  have  accused  poor  Mr.  Skindle  again,  even  set 
out  after  the  innocent  vet.  with  his  whip.  Then  perhaps  actions 
for  assault  and  battery,  for  slander,  for  who  knew  what ! 

Horse-stealing  was  unheard  of  in  these  parts,  and  who  save  a 
dealer  in  antiquities  would  steal  Methusalem  ?  No ;  as  in  a  fit 
of  midsummer  madness — under  the  depression  of  the  drought 
and  his  depleted  nosebags — he  had  bolted !  After  all,  old  horses 
were  probably  as  uncertain  as  old  grandfathers.  Was  there  to 
be  a  new  course  of  senility  for  her  study,  she  wondered  ruefully : 
had  she  now  to  school  herself  to  the  vagaries  of  horsey  decay  as 
she  had  schooled  herself  to  human  ?  But,  of  course,  she  surmised 
suddenly,  it  was  the  dragging  the  poor  horse  up  in  the  middle  of 
the  night  that  had  turned  his  aged  brain,  and  the  hammering-in 
of  the  staple  had  lent  the  last  touch  of  alarm.  He  had  been 
liable  to  panic  even  in  his  prime.  Perhaps  he  had  bolted  before 
Gran'fer's  very  eyes,  mane  and  tail  madly  erect.  That  might 
explain  the  uneasy  look  with  which  the  old  man  had  met  her 
return — a  sidelong  glance  almost  like  Nip's  squint  after  an 
escapade — his  taciturnity  as  of  a  culprit  not  daring  to  confess  his 
carelessness,  as  well  as  his  welcome  blindness  to  the  wedding 
fineries  she  had  been  too  desperate  to  remove.  But  no,  he 
would  not  have  sat  down  under  such  a  loss,  or  brisked  up  so 
swiftly  under  the  smell  of  dinner,  or  pressed  the  food  so  solicitously 
upon  her  with  the  remark,  "  There's  a  plenty  for  both  of  lus, 
dearie — do  ye  don't  be  afeared."  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  he 
had  been  noting  her  self-denial  :  at  any  rate  such  an  assurance 
could  not  coexist  with  the  loss  of  their  means  of  livelihood. 

It  was  a  mystery.  The  only  thing  that  was  clear  was  that 
Methusalem   must   be   recaptured   before   her   grandfather   was 

2D 


4i8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

aware  of  his  loss.  Such  a  catastrophe,  coming  after  the  scene  in 
the  small  hours,  might  have  as  morbid  an  effect  upon  him  as  that 
nocturnal  episode  had  evidently  had  upon  Methusalem  himself. 

Bonnetless,  with  streaming  ringlets,  in  her  lace-adorned  dress, 
she  wandered  farther  and  farther  in  quest  of  her  beloved  com- 
panion. It  was  some  time  before  she  discovered  that  her  other 
friend  was  at  her  heels.  Surely  Nip  would  guide  her  to  Methu- 
salem, as  he  had  guided  her  through  the  darkness.  But  this 
abandonment  to  his  whim  only  led  her  to  the  cottages  with 
which  he  was  on  terms  of  cupboard  affection,  and  dragged  her 
into  the  very  heart  of  the  tragedy  retailed  by  Bundock  to  the 
wedding-party,  to  the  home  of  a  dead  labourer. 

"  His  fitten  were  dead  since  the  morning,"  the  widow  informed 
her  with  lachrymose  gusto.  "  At  the  end  he  was  loight-headed 
and  talked  about  puttin'  up  the  stack." 

The  neighbours  were  still  more  ghoulishly  garrulous,  and  the 
odour  of  this  death  pervaded  their  cottages  like  the  smell  of  the 
straw  steeped  in  their  pails,  and  as  the  housewives  turned  their 
plaiting- wheels  they  span  rival  tales  of  lurid  deceases,  while  a 
woman  who  was  walking  with  her  little  girl — both  plaiting  hard 
as  they  walked — removed  the  split  strav*^s  from  her  mouth  to 
proclaim  that  she  had  prophesied  a  death  in  the  house — shaving 
seen  the  man's  bees  swarm  on  his  clothes-prop.  She  hoped  they 
would  tell  his  bees  of  his  decease.  But  desirable  as  it  was  to 
meet  a  white  horse — that  bringer  of  luck — ^nobody  had  set  eyes  on 
a  wild-wandering  Methusalem.    Nor  was  he  in  the  village  pound. 

She  found  herself  drifting  through  the  wood  where  she  had 
once  sat  with  Will,  and  through  the  glade  where  the  tops  of  the 
aspens  were  a  quiver  of  little  white  gleams.  Had  Methusalem 
perhaps  come  trampling  here  ?  That  was  all  her  thought,  save 
for  a  shadowy  rim  of  painful  memory.  Bare  of  Methusalem,  the 
wood  at  this  anxious  moment  was  as  blank  of  poetry  as  the 
lanky  hornbeam  "  poles,"  or  the  bundles  of  "  tops "  lying 
around.  One  aspen  was  so  weak  and  bent  it  recalled  her  grand- 
father, and  the  white-barked  birches  craned  so  over  the  other 
trees,  she  was  reminded  of  a  picture  with'  giraffes  in  Mother 
Gander's  sanctum.  But  of  horses  there  was  no  sign.  Picking 
up  a  wing  covert  of  a  jay,  not  because  of  the  beautiful  blue 
barring,  but  because  it  would  make  fishing  flies  for  Uncle  Lilli- 
whyte,  she  now  ran  to  his  hut  with  a  flickering  hope  that  he 
would  have  information,  but  it  was  empty  of  him,  and  she  saw 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  419 

from  the  absence  of  his  old  flintlock  that  he  was  sufficiently 
recovered  to  be  poaching.  She  emerged  from  the  wood  near 
Miss  Gentry's  cottage.  But  the  landlady,  who  had  the  deserted 
Squibs  in  her  arms,  could  only  calculate  that  Methusalem  had 
left  his  stable  at  the  same  moment  as  the  dead  labourer's  soul 
had  flown  out  of  his  body,  and  that  there  was  doubtless  a  con- 
nexion. "  Harses  has  wunnerful  sense,"  said  the  good  woman. 
Jinny  agreed,  but  withheld  her  opinion  of  humans.  She  felt  if 
only  all  the  horses  jogging  along  these  sun-splashed  arcades  of 
elms  could  speak,  the  mystery  would  soon  be  cleared  up.  For 
Methusalem  was  of  a  nose-rubbing  sociability.  But  it  was  only 
the  drivers  of  all  these  lazy-rolling  carts — fodder,  straw,  timber, 
dung,  what  not — that  presumed  to  speak  for  their  great  hairy- 
legged  beasts.  To  one  wagoner  lying  so  high  on  his  golden-hued 
load  that  his  eye  seemed  to  sweep  all  Essex,  she  called  up  with 
peculiar  hope  :  he  confessed  he  had  been  drowsing  in  the  heat. 
"  So  mungy,"  he  pleaded.  Indeed  the  afternoon  was  getting 
abnormally  hot  and  stuffy,  and  Jinny  had  to  defend  her  bare 
head  from  the  sun  with  her  handkerchief.  Hedgers  and  ditchers 
had  seen  as  little  of  a  masterless,  bare-flanked  Methusalem  as 
the  thatcher  with  his  more  advantageous  view-point.  Leisurely 
driving  in  the  stakes  with  his  little  club,  this  knee-padded, 
corduroyed  elder  opined  that  it  would  be  "  tempesty."  And 
they  could  do  with  some  rain. 

That  the  rain  was  indeed  wanted  as  badly  as  she  wanted  Methu- 
salem was  obvious  enough  from  the  solitude  about  the  white, 
gibbet-shaped  Silverlane  pump  and  the  black  barrel  on  wheels 
round  which  aproned,  lank-bosomed  women  should  have  been 
gossiping,  jug  or  pail  in  hand.  In  the  absence  of  this  congrega- 
tion Jinny  had  to  perambulate  the  green-and-white  houses  of 
the  great  square  and  hurl  individual  inquiries  across  the  wooden 
door-boards  that  safeguarded  the  infants.  Only  the  village 
midwife  had  seen  a  horse  like  Methusalem  as  she  returned  from 
a  case.  She  had  been  too  sleepy,  though,  to  notice  properly. 
From  this  futile  quest  Jinny  came  out  on  the  road  again.  But 
wheelwright  and  blacksmith,  ploughman  and  gipsy,  publican  and 
tinker,  all  were  drawn  blank. 

Beside  trees  tidily  bounding  farms,  or  meadows  dotted  with 
cows  and  foals,  and  every  kind  of  horse  except  Methusalem,  past 
grotesque  quaint-chimneyed  houses  half  brick,  half  weather-board, 
the  road  led  Jinny  on  and  on  till  it  took  her  across  the  bridge. 


420  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Here  on  the  bank  she  recognized  the  plastered  hair  of  Mr.  Charles 
Mott,  who  was  fishing  gloomily.  No,  he  had  not  seen  a  white 
horse — ^worse  luck  ! — and  would  to  God,  he  added  savagely,  that 
he  had  never  seen  a  black  sheep.  Jinny  hurried  off,  as  from  a 
monster  of  profanity,  for  Mr.  Mott's  disinclination  for  his  wife's 
society,  especially  on  chapel  days,  was,  she  knew,  beginning  to 
perturb  the  "  Peculiars  "  ;  and  with  the  sacramental  language 
of  the  marriage  service  yet  ringing  in  her  ears,  it  seemed  to  our 
guileless  Jinny  ineffably  wicked  to  be  sunk  in  selfish  sport  instead 
of  cherishing  and  comforting  the  woman  to  whom  you  had 
consecrated  yourself. 

She  moved  on  pensively — the  road  after  descending  rose  some- 
what, so  that  Long  Bradmarsh  seemed  to  nestle  behind  her  in  a 
hollow,  a  medley  of  thatch  and  slate,  steeple  and  chimney-stacks, 
hayricks  and  inn-signs,  and  fluttering  sheets  and  petticoats.  But 
the  forward  view  seemed  far  more  bounded  than  usual,  deprived 
as  it  was  of  the  driver's  vantage-point :  to  the  toiling  pedestrian 
her  familiar  landscape  was  subtly  changed,  and  this  added  to 
the  sense  of  change  and  disaster. 

She  passed  Foxearth  Farm  near  enough  to  see  again  the 
barouche  now  awaiting  the  honeymooners,  and  to  hear  the 
voices  of  Will  and  Blanche  mingling  in  a  merry  chorus.  There 
was  an  aching  at  her  heart,  but  everything  now  came  dulled  to 
her  as  through  an  opiate.  Methusalem  was  the  only  real  thing 
in  life.  She  wanted  to  make  her  inquiry  of  the  driver,  but  her 
legs  bore  her  onwards  to  a  glade  where  she  could  rest  on  one  of 
Mr.  Purley's  felled  trunks.  Even  there  the  chorus  pursued  her, 
spoiling  the  music  of  the  little  stream  that  babbled  at  her  feet, 
and  the  beauty  of  willow-herb  and  tall  yellow  leopard' s-bane  and 
those  white  bell-blossoms  of  convolvulus  twining  and  twisting 
high  up  among  the  trees  still  standing. 

It  was  well  past  five  before,  footsore  and  spent,  she  stopped 
on  her  homeward  road  at  the  Pennymole  cottage  for  information 
and  a  glass  of  water.  This  must  be  her  last  point,  for  standing 
as  it  did  at  the  Four  Wantz  Way,  it  overlooked  every  direction 
in  which  Methusalem  could  possibly  have  gone,  had  he  come 
thus  far,  while  the  size  of  the  Pennymole  family  provided  over 
a  score  of  eyes.  She  found  herself  plunged  into  the  eve-of- 
Sabbath  ritual — all  the  seven  younger  children  being  scrubbed 
in  turn  by  the  mother  in  a  single  tub  of  water,  and  left  to  run 
about  in  a  state  of  nature,  or  varying  stages  of  leisurely  redressing. 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  421 

But  neither  the  nude  nor  the  semi-decent  nor  Mrs.  Pennymole 
herself,  with  her  bar  of  yellow  soap,  had  seen  even  the  tip  of 
Methusalem's  tail,  and  the  extinction  of  this  last  hope  left  Jinny 
so  visibly  overcome  that  the  busy  mother  insisted  on  her  sitting 
down  and  waiting  for  tea.  She  urged  that  "  father  "  would  soon 
be  home,  as  well  as  the  two  elder  boys,  all  at  work  in  different 
places,  and  "  happen  lucky  "  one  of  the  three  would  have  seen 
the  missing  animal.  Jinny  felt  too  weak  to  refuse  the  tea,  and 
though  the  thought  of  her  neglected  grandfather  was  as  gnawing 
as  her  hunger,  she  reasoned  with  herself  that  she  would  really 
get  to  him  quicker  if  refreshed.  The  elder  lads  came  in  very 
soon,  one  after  the  other,  each  handing  his  day's  sixpence  to  his 
mother  and  receiving  a  penny  for  himself.  But  neither  brought 
even  a  crumb  for  Jiniiy.  Mrs.  Pennymole  beguiled  the  time  of 
waiting  for  the  master  and  the  meal  by  relating,  in  view  of  the 
labourer's  death,  how  she  had  lost  two  children  five  years  ago. 

No  fewer  than  four  were  down  at  once  with  the  black  thrush. 
Two  boys  lay  on  the  sofa,  one  at  each  end,  an  infant  in  the 
bassinet  under  the  table,  and  a  girl  in  the  bed.  One  of  the 
sofa  patients  had  swellings  behind  his  ears  the  size  of  eggs,  but 
they  were  lanced  and  he  lived  to  earn  his  three  shillings  a  week. 
The  other,  a  fine  lad  of  thirteen,  died  at  three  in  the  afternoon. 
The  girl  died  at  half-past  eleven  at  night — beautiful  she  looked ; 
like  a  wax  statue.  The  undertaker  was  afraid  to  put  them  in 
their  coffin ;  afraid  to  bring  contagion  to  his  own  children. 
"  Perhaps  your  husband  would  do  it,"  he  suggested  to  her. 
But  her  husband,  poor  man,  couldn't.  "  How  would  you  like 
to  put  your  childer  in  coffins  ?  "  he  asked  the  undertaker. 
The  doctor  wouldn't  let  her  follow  the  funeral,  she  was  so 
broken. 

But  it  was  Jinny  who  was  broken  now.  These  reminiscences 
were  more  painful  for  her  than  for  the  mother  who — ^inexhaustible 
fountain  of  life — scoured  her  newer  progeny  to  their  accompani- 
ment. Yes,  existence  seemed  very  black  to  Jinny,  sitting  there 
without  food,  or  Will,  or  Methusalem,  or  anything  but  a  grand- 
father ;  and  the  china  owl  with  a  real  coloured  handkerchief  tied 
round  its  head,  which  was  the  outstanding  ornament  of  the 
mantelpiece,  seemed  in  its  grotesque  gloom  an  apt  symbol  of 
existence.  She  was  very  glad  when  cheery,  brawny  Mr.  Penny- 
mole'burst  in,  labouring  with  a  story  in  which  whisker-shaking 
laughter  bubbled  through  a  humorous  stupefaction. 


422  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

He  had  begun  to  tell  the  story  almost  before  he^'had  perceived 
and  greeted  Jinny,  and  Methusalem's  disappearance,  on  which  he 
could  throw  no  light,  served  to  enhance  it.  To  him,  too,  the  day 
had  brought  an  earth-shaking  novelty — there  must  be  something 
in  the  moon.  For  thirty  years,  he  explained,  as  he  took  off  his 
coat  and  boots  (though  not  his  cap),  he  had  risen  at  half-past 
four.  But  waking  that  morning  at  one  o'clock,  he  had  got  to 
sleep  again,  and  the  next  thing  he  knew — after  what  seemed  to 
him  a  little  light  slumber — was  a  child  saying  :  "  Mother,  what's 
the  time  ?  "  Half-past  five,  mother  had  replied — Mrs.  Penny- 
mole  here  corroborated  the  statement  at  some  length  ;  adding 
that  it  was  Jemima  who  inquired,  she  being  such  a  light  sleeper, 
and  always  so  anxious  to  be  oif  to  school :  an  interruption  that 
her  lord  sustained  impatiently,  for  this  was  the  dramatic  moment 
of  the  story.  Half-past  five  !  Up  he  had  jumped,  never  made 
his  fire  nor  his  tea,  never  had  his  pipe,  and  instead  of  leaving 
home  at  twenty  to  six,  still  smoking  it,  he  had  rushed  round  to 
his  brother-in-law's,  where  fortunately  he  was  in  time  for  the 
last  cup  o'  tea,  and  then  out  with  his  horses  as  usual ! 

"  And  /  made  him  tea  and  sent  it  round  to  the  field,"  gurgled 
Mrs.  Pennymole  as  she  unhooked  her  bodice  for  the  last  baby. 
"  He  had  two  teas  !  " 

Mr.  Pennymole  and  Jinny  joined  in  her  laugh.  "  Sometimes 
I've  woke  at  'arf-past  three,"  he  explained  carefully.  "  But  then 
I  felt  all  right."  He  recapitulated  the  wonder  of  his  oversleeping 
himself,  as  he  drew  up  to  the  table,  where  the  bulk  of  his  progeny 
was  already  installed,  and  it  overbrooded  his  distribution  of  bread 
and  jam  in  great  slices. 

"  And  /  was  up  at  four  !  "  Mrs.  Pennymole  bragged  waggishly. 

"  Yes,  upstairs !  "  Mr.  Pennymole  retorted,  sharp  as  his  knife, 
and  the  table  was  in  a  roar,  not  to  mention  the  four  corners  of  the 
room,  where  those  of  the  brood  squatted  who  could  not  find 
places  at  the  board.  Everybody  sat  munching  the  ritual  hunk, 
though  for  the  black  strong  tea  the  adults  alone  had  cups,  two 
mugs  circulating  among  the  swarm  of  children,  whose  clamours 
for  their  fair  turn  had  to  be  checked  by  paternal  cries  for  silence. 
Mrs.  Pennymole  pressed  both  husband  and  guest  to  share  her 
little  piece  of  fat  pork  fried  with  bread,  but  they  knew  better 
what  was  due  to  a  nursing  mother.  Jinny  felt  grateful  enough  for 
the  bread  and  jam  and  the  tea,  cheap  but  at  least  not  from  burnt 
crusts,  and  sugared  abundantly,  despite  that  sugar— as  Mrs.  Penny- 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  423 

mole  complained — had  gone  up  "  something  cruel."  But  though 
such  a  meal  was  luxury  for  her  nowadays,  she  could  hardly  help 
wistful  mouth-watering  visions  of  the  wedding-feast,  from  the 
known  dumplings  to  the  unknown  champagne.  It  was  for  a  strange 
company  she  had  exchanged  the  wedding-party,  she  thought 
ruefully,  as  she  refused  a  third  slice  of  bread.  She  could  not  weU 
accept  it,  when  each  child,  solemnly  asked  in  turn  whether  it 
would  like  a  second,  had  replied  with  wonderful  unanimity  in 
the  affirmative,  and  Mr.  Penny  mole,  with  his  eye  on  the  waning 
loaf,  had  remarked  that  children  had  wonderful  healthy  appe- 
tites, though  that  was  better  than  doctors.  She  was  glad, 
however,  to  be  given'  a  wedge  of  bread  and  cheese,  though  when 
her  host  jabbed  his  into  his  mouth  at  the  point  of  his  knife,  it 
called  up  a  distressing  memory  of  a  gobbet  of  wedding-cake 
thrown  to  a  dog,  and  she  became  suddenly  aware  that  Nip 
was  no  longer  with  her.  She  remembered  seeing  him  last  as  she 
sat  on  the  log,  and  she  rightly  divined  that — wiser  than  she — he 
had  gone  to  the  wedding-meal ! 

Before  she  could  get  away  from  her  Barmecide  banquet,  the 
brother-in-law  and  his  wife  came  in,  and  then  the  whole  story  of 
the  oversleeping  had  to  be  laughed  and  marvelled  over  afresh. 
The  more  often  Mr.  Pennymole  told  the  story,  the  more  his  sense 
of  its  whimsicalness  and  w^onder  grew  upon  Jiim,  and  the  more 
his  audience  enjoyed  it.  "  /  made  his  tea,"  cackled  Mrs.  Penny- 
mole.  "  I  sent  it  round  to  the  field.  So  he  had  two  teas  !  " 
The  cottage  rocked  with  laughter.  Only  the  owl  and  Jinny 
preserved  their  gravity.  And  even  Jinny  could  not  resist  the 
infection  when  Mrs.  Pennymole  boasted  to  her  visitors  that 
she  herself  had  been  up  at  four,  and  Mr.  Pennymole,  vnth.  an 
air  of  invincible  shrewdness,  pointed  out  that  it  was  "  up- 
stairs "  she  had  been.  So  that  though  neither  of  the  new-comers 
could  throw  light  upon  the  Methusalem  mystery.  Jinny  left  the 
cottage  refreshed  by  more  than  tea,  and  with  the  flavour  of  the 
corpse-talk  washed  away.  The  humour  of  it  all  even  went  with 
her  on  her  long  homeward  tramp.  In  imagination  she  heard 
the  oddness  of  the  oversleeping  and  the  duplication  of  the  teas 
still  savoured  with  grins  and  guffaws,  while  the  little  ones  dribbled 
bedwards,  while  the  elder  boys  were  scrubbed  in  the  scullery,  and 
while  the  indefatigable  Mrs.  Pennymole  was  w^ashing  the  hero 
of  the  history  down  to  his  waist.  Her  fancy  followed  the  tale 
spreading  over  the  parish,  told  and  retold,  borne  by  Bundock  to 


424  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

ever  wider  circles,  adding  to  the  gaiety  of  the  Hundred,  abiding 
as  a  family  tradition  when  that  babe  at  Mrs.  Pennymole's  breast 
was  a  grandmother — the  tale  of  how  for  thirty  years  Mr.  Penny- 
mcle  had  got  up  at  half-past  four,  and  how  at  long  last  the 
record  was  broken  ! 

Speeding  along  in  this  merrier  mood,  Jinny  had  almost  reached 
home  by  a  short  cut  through  the  woods,  when  she  espied  a  gay- 
stringed,  battered  beaver  and  learned  the  tragic  truth. 


XIII 

Uncle  Lilliwhyte  was  carrying  by  its  long  legs  the  spoil  of  his 
rusty  flintlock — Jinny  was  glad  to  see  it  was  only  a  legitimate 
curlew  with  its  dagger-like  bill.  He  offered  the  bird  for  sale,  but 
she  was  afraid  it  had  fed  too  long  on  the  marsh  mud.  She  was 
glad  to  hear,  though,  he  had  called  that  very  morning  and  sold 
her  grandfather  truffles — Uncle  had  a  pig's  nose  for  truffles,  and 
her  grandfather  a  passion  for  them. 

"  He  hadn't  got  change  for  a  foive-pun'  note,"  Uncle  Lilliwhyte 
reported.  "  And  Oi  hadn't,  neither,"  he  chuckled.  "  So  ye  owes 
me  tuppence." 

Jinny  was  amused  at  her  grandfather's  magnificent  mendacity 
— his  lordly  way  of  carrying  off  his  pennilessness. 

"  Never  mind  the  twopence  now,"  she  said.  "  You  haven't 
seen  Methusalem,  I  suppose  ?  " 

She  had  supposed  it  so  often  that  she  took  the  answer  for 
granted.     This  reply  struck  her  like  a  cannon-ball. 

"  Not  since  'Lijah  Skindle  took  him  away  this  marnin'  !  " 

"  Elijah  Skindle  took  him !  "  she  gasped,  breathless  yet 
reHeved.  "  What  for  ?  Where  ?  "  Had  her  grandfather's  fears 
been  justified  then  ? 

"  To  his  'orspital,  Oi  reckon.  Trottin'  behind  the  trap  he 
was,  tied  to  it.  A  sick  'oss  don't  want  to  goo  that  pace  though, 
thinks  Oi.  'Twould  be  before  bever,"  he  added,  when  she 
demanded  the  exact  hour. 

"  When  I  was  at  church  !  But  Methusalem  wasn't  sick  when 
I  left  home." 

"  Must  ha'  been  took  sick — or  it  stands  to  reason  your  Gran'fer 
wouldn't  ha'  let  him  goo  1  " 

"  But  Gran'fer  didn't  know !  " 

"  Arxin'  your  pardon,  Jinny — Mr.  Quarles  waved  to  'em  as 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  425 

they  went  off.  And  Oi'll  be  thankful  to  you  for  the  tuppence, 
needin'  my  Sunday  beer." 

She  groped  in  her  purse.  "  But  if  Mr.  Skindle  took  him  back 
to  Chipstone,  how  comes  it  nobody  has  seen  him  ?  " 

"  He  went  roundabouts  by  Bog  Lane  and  Squash  End, 
'tis  all  droied-up  nowadays.  And  took  Bidlake's  Ferry,  Oi 
reckon,  stead  o'  the  bridge." 

A  sinister  feeling,  as  yet  formless,  began  to  creep  into  Jinny's 
veins.  Handing  the  nondescript  his  twopence  and  the  jay 
feather,  she  ran  out  of  the  wood  and  then  in  the  dusking  owl- 
light  by  a  field-path,  and  through  a  prickly  hedge  of  dog-rose  and 
blackberry  that  left  her  with  scratched  fingers,  into  her  own 
little  plot  of  ground.  The  stable  door  was  now  locked,  though 
its  aching  emptiness  was  still  visible  through  the  weather-boarding 
as  she  passed  by ;  the  house-door  was  even  more  securely  fastened, 
and  all  the  windows  were  tightly  closed.  She  rattled  the  case- 
ment of  the  living-room  and  heard  her  grandfather  finally 
hobbling  down  the  stairs. 

He  examined  her  cautiously  through  the  little  panes. 

"  Ye've  left  me  in  the  dark,"  he  complained,  turning  the 
window-clasp.  "  Oi'm  famished.  Where  you  been  gaddin'  in 
that  frock  ?  " 

"  Did  you  send  Methusalem  away  ?  "  she  cried  impatiently. 

He  put  a  scooped  hand  to  his  ear.     "  What  be  you  a-sayin'  ?  " 

"  Open  the  door  !  "  she  called  angrily.     "  You  mustn't  shut 


me  out." 


"  We've  got  to  be  careful.  Jinny."  He  moved  to  the  door. 
"  There's  a  sight  o'  bad  charriters  about." 

"  Yes,  indeed.  What  did  Mr.  Skindle  want  here  ?  "  she  asked, 
as  the  bolts  shot  back. 

"  Skindle !  "  He  pondered.  "  Young  'Lijah,  d'ye  mean  ?  He 
brought  me  a  pot." 

"  That  was  long  ago — what  did  he  want  this  morning  ?  " 

"  This  marnin'  ?  Oh,  ay  " — the  sidelong  look  returned  with 
remembrance  and  was  succeeded  by  one  of  defiance — "  That's 
my  business." 

A  terrible  suspicion  flashed  upon  Jinny. 

"  You  haven't  sold  Methusalem  ?  "  she  cried. 

He  winced.  "  That's  my  property.  Daniel  Quarles,  Carrier. 
And  by  the  good  rights,  Oi " 

"  You  have  sold  him  !  "  she  hissed  in  a  fury  strange  to  herself. 


426  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

And  she  found  herself  shaking  the  old  man  by  the  arms,  shaking 
him  as  he  had  shaken  her  that  very  morning  in  the  small  hours. 
And  he  was  cowering  before  her,  the  fierce  old  man,  cowering 
there  on  his  own  doorstep. 

"  Oi  couldn't  see  ye  starve,"  he  pleaded. 

"  Oh,  it's  not  me  you  were  thinking  of  !  "  she  said  harshly,  not 
caring  whether  she  was  just  or  not.  "  You  might  have  trusted 
yourself  to  me  after  all  these  years."  Indignation  at  Elijah's 
supposed  swindling  mingled  with  her  wrath — the  idea  of  his 
getting  Methusalem,  an  animal  worth  his  weight  in  gold,  for  a 
miserable  five-pound  note !  She  gave  the  old  man  a  final 
shake,  imaginatively  intended  for  Mr.  Skindle.  "Where's  the 
money  ?  "  she  cried,  letting  him  go. 

He  recovered  himself  somewhat.  "  That's  my  money,"  he 
said  sullenly. 

'"'  But  where  have  you  put  it  ?  " 

Cunning  and  obstinacy  mingled  in  his  eye.  "  Oi've  put  it  safe 
agin  all  they  thieves  !  " 

"  I  don't  believe  you've  got  any  money,"  she  said,  matching 
cunning  by  cunning.     "  You  just  let  Mr.  Skindle  rob  you." 

"  Noa,  Oi  dedn't.     Oi  got  more  than  Methusalem  was  worth." 

"  Really  ?     More  than  a  sovereign  ?  " 

"  A  suvran  !  "  He  cackled  with  a  crafty  air.  "  More  than 
double  that !  " 

"  More  than  two  sovereigns  ?  "  said  Jinny  in  tones  of  ingenuous 
admiration. 

"  More  than  double  that !  " 

"  More  than  four  sovereigns  ?  "  Enthusiasm  shone  in  her  eyes 
through  the  dusk. 

He  hurried  towards  the  stairs. 

"  You're  not  going  to  bed  ?  "  she  called  with  mock  anxiety. 
"  You  haven't  had  supper  !  " 

"  We'll  have  plenty  o'  supper  now.  He,  he  !  "  His  gleeful 
cackle  descended  from  the  winding  staircase.  Before  he  returned, 
chuckling  still,  she  had  lit  the  lamp  and  put  out  some  cold 
rabbit-pie  and  a  jug  of  beer  on  the  tiger-painted  tray. 

"  A  foiver  1  "  he  cried,  waving  it. 

She  snatched  at  the  note  and  tore  it  in  two  and  let  the  pieces 
flutter  away. 

"  Help  !  Thieves  !  She's  robbed  me,"  screamed  the  Gaffer. 
He  scrambled  on  his  knees  after  the  fragments. 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  427 

"  Hush  !  How  dare  you  sell  Methusalem  ?  "  He  cowered 
again  before  her  passion. 

"  That  was  eating  us  out  of  house  and  home  !  "  he  whimpered. 

"  Get  up  !     There's  your  supper." 

He  rose  like  a  scolded  child,  clutching  the  scraps  of  thin  paper. 
She  put  on  her  bonnet. 

"  Where  ye  gooin'  ?  " 

"  To  Mr.  Skindle,  of  course." 

"  Too  late  for  that !  " 

"  No,  it  isn't." 

"  But  ye  won't  git  Methusalem  back." 

"  Oh,  won't  I,  though  !  " 

"  But  ye've  tore  up  his  foiver  !  " 

"  I  don't  care."  But  alarmed  at  heart  over  her  insane  deed, 
she  took  the  pieces  from  his  unresisting  hand  and  put  them  in 
her  purse.     "  Don't  bolt  me  out  or  I'll  break  the  window." 

"  But  listen,  dearie,  Mr.  Skindle  won't  be  there — the  place'll 
be  shut  up  !  " 

"  All  the  better.     I'll  break  it  in." 

"  But  what's  the  good  o'  that  ?  Poor  old  Methusalem's  out 
o'  his  misery  by  now  !  " 

Her  heart  stood  still.  "  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  She  was 
white  and  shaking. 

"  'Lijah  kills  at  seven,"  he  said,  "  afore  his  supper." 

"  Oh,  my  God  !  "  she  gasped,  the  completeness  of  the  tragedy 
impinging  on  her  for  the  first  time.  ''  You  sold  him  to  be  lolled  ! 
No,  no  !  "  she  cried,  recovering.  "  He  wouldn't  give  five  pounds 
just  for  a  carcase  !  " 

"  Then  ef  that  ain't  killed  yet,"  said  the  Gaffer,  "  that  won't 
be  till  to-morrow  night." 

A  sensible  remark  for  once.  Jinny  thought,  subsiding  almost 
happily  into  a  chair.  It  had  been  silly  even  to  contemplate 
setting  out  afresh  after  aU  the  day's  journeyings.  In  this 
weather  the  doomed  horses  would  be  shut  up  in  Mr.  Skindle's 
field, — she  recalled  their  joyous  gamboUings — the  first  thing  in 
the  morning  she  would  set  out  to  the  rescue.  And  yet  what  if 
her  grandfather  should  be  wrong,  what  if  Mr.  Skindle  killed 
before  breakfast !  No,  delay  might  be  fatal,  and  she  started  up 
afresh  and,  unlocking  the  stable-door,  brought  in  her  lantern. 

"  Ye're  not  gooin'  to  Mr.  Skindle  at  this  time  o'  day  ?  " 
protested  the  Gaffer  from  his  soothing  tray. 


428  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  I  must."     She  lit  the  candle  in  the  lantern. 

"  Well,  give  my  love  to  his  mother  !  "  She  thought  it  sarcasm 
and  went  off  even  more  embittered  against  him. 

She  had  not  gone  far  before  she  met  the  returning  reveller. 
Nip's  ears  were  abased  and  his  eyes  edge-long,  but  in  an  instant, 
aware  she  was  glad  of  his  company,  he  welcomed  her  roysterously 
to  it.  But  the  blackness  that  now  began  to  fall  upon  the  pair 
was  not  wholly  of  the  night.  Great  livid  thunder-clouds  were 
sagging  over  them,  and  of  a  sudden  the  whole  landscape  was  lit 
up  with  blue  blazings  and  shaken  with  terrific  thunder.  And 
then  came  the  rain — the  long-pray ed-f or  rain,  with  its  rich 
rejoicing  gurgle.  Providence,  importuned  on  all  sides,  now 
asserted  itself  in  a  pour  that  was  like  solid  sheets  of  water,  and 
the  parched  soil  seemed  swilled  in  a  few  seconds.  To  plough 
along  was  not  only  difficult  but  foolhardy.  Heaven  had  clearly 
thrown  cold  water  on  the  project.  She  crept  almost  shame- 
facedly back  to  her  stiU  guzzling  grandfather. 

"  Got  a  wettin',"  he  chuckled.  "  Sarve  ye  right  to  be  sow 
obstropolus.  And  sarve  you  right  too  !  "  he  added,  launching  a 
kick  towards  the  shivering  and  dripping  animal.  Nip,  though 
untouched,  uttered  a  dreadful  howl,  and  grovelled  on  his  back. 

"  Do  you  want  to  kill  them  both  ?  "  cried  Jinny.  She  was  now 
sure  that  Methusalem  was  beyond  reprieve — the  point  of  Mr. 
Skindle's  strategy  in  purchasing  him,  so  as  to  leave  her  no 
sphere  but  matrimony,  was  penetrating  to  her  mind,  and,  by  the 
side  of  such  "  a  dirty  bit,"  Will's  frank  and  blusterous  methods 
began  to  appear  magnanimity  itself.  To  have  found  out,  too, 
probably  from  Bundock,  that  she  would  be  away  at  the  wedding  I 
The  sly  skunk  ! 


XIV 

For  a  full  hour  after  Nip  and  her  grandfather  slept  the  sleep  of 
the  innocent  in  their  beds,  she  sat  up  watching  the  storm,  with 
no  surprise  at  this  unrest  of  the  elements.  No  less  a  cataclysm 
was  adequate  to  the  passing  of  Methusalem.  This  sympathy  of 
Nature  indeed  relieved  her,  some  of  her  stoniness  melted,  and 
her  face — as  if  in  reciprocation — became  as  deluged  as  the 
face  of  the  earth-mother.  All  the  long  years  with  Methusalem- 
passed  before  her  vision,  ever  since  that  first  meeting  of  theirs 
outside  the  Watch  Vessel :   their  common  adventures  in  sunshine 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  429 

and  snow,  in  mud  and  rain,  her  whip  only  an  extra  tail  for  him 
to  whisk  off  his  flies  withal :  ah,  the  long  martyrdom  from  those 
flies,  especially  the  nose-fly  that  spoilt  the  glory  of  July.  She 
heard  again  that  queer  tick-tack  of  his  hoofs,  his  whinnying,  his 
coughing,  saw  the  spasmodic  shudder  of  his  shoulder- joints,  the 
peculiar  gulp  with  which  he  took  his  drench.  How  often  they 
had  gone  together  to  have  a  nail  fixed,  or  his  shoes  roughed  for 
the  winter !  What  silly  alarms  he  had  felt,  when  she  had  had 
to  soothe  him  like  a  mother,  coax  him  to  pass  something,  and  on 
the  other  hand  what  a  skill  beyond  hers  in  going  un guided 
through  the  moonless,  swift-fallen  winter  night !  How  happily 
he  had  nibbled  at  the  beans  in  his  corner-crib  or  the  oats  in  his 
manger,  what  time  he  was  brushed  and  combed — would  that 
beloved  mane  get  into  rats'-tails  no  more  ?  Was  she  never 
again  to  feel  that  soft  nose  against  her  cheek  in  a  love  passing 
the  love  of  man  ?  Could  all  this  cheery  laborious  vitality  have 
ended,  be  one  with  the  dust  she  had  so  often  brushed  from  his 
fetlocks  ?  That  joy  which  had  set  him  frisking  like  an  uncouth 
kitten  when  he  was  released  from  the  shafts,  was  it  not  to  be  his 
now  that  he  was  freed  for  ever  ?  Was  he  to  be  nothing  but  a 
carcase  ?  Nay — horror  upon  horror — would  he  survive  only  as 
glove-  or  boot-buttons,  as  that  wretch  of  a  Skindle  calculated  ? 
Would  that  triumphant  tail  wave  only  at  human  funerals,  his 
own  last  rites  unpaid  ?  A  remembrance  of  her  glimpse  at  the 
charnel-house  made  her  almost  sick.  Fed  to  the  foxhounds 
perhaps  !     Could  such  things  be  in  a  God-governed  world  ? 

And  her  cart  too  would  go — of  the  old  life  there  would  be 
nothing  left  any  more.  She  could  see  the  bill  pasted  up  on  the 
barn-doors  :    "  Carrier's  Cart  on  Springs,  with  Set  of  Harness, 

Cart  Gear,  Back  Bands,  Belly  Bands "     But  what  nonsense  ! 

Who  would  advertise  such  a  ramshackle  ruin  ?  "A  Shabby, 
Cracked  Canvas  Tilt,  Patched  with  Sacking" — fancy  that  on  a 
poster !  No,  like  its  horse,  it  would  be  adjudged  fit  only  to  be 
broken  up.  Perhaps  somebody  wearing  Methusalem  on  his 
shoes  would  sit  on  the  bar  of  a  stile  made  of  its  axle-tree. 

She  woke  from  her  reverie  and  to  the  wetness  of  her  face, 
streaming  with  bitter-sweet  tears.  The  moon  rode  almost  full, 
and  in  the  pale  blue  spread  of  sky  sparse  stars  shone,  one  or  two 
t^vinkling.  She  opened  the  door  and  went  out  into  the  night. 
What  delicious  wafts  of  smells  after  the  long  mugginess  of  the 
day !     The  elms  and  poplars  rose  in  mystic  lines  bordering  the 


430  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

great  bare  spaces.  Surely  the  death  of  Methusalem  had  been 
but  a  nightmare — if  she  went  to  the  stable,  there  would  he  be 
as  usual,  snug  and  safe  in  his  straw.  She  sped  thither,  over  the 
sodden  grass,  with  absolute  conviction.  Alas,  the  same  endless 
emptiness  yawned,  the  manger  looked  strange  and  tragic  in  the 
moonlight.  She  thought  of  a  divine  infant  once  lying  in  one, 
wrapped  in  his  swaddling-clothes,  and  then  looking  up  skywards 
she  saw  a  figure  hovering.  Yes,  it  was — it  was  the  Angel-Mother, 
so  beautiful  in  the  azure  light.  At  the  sight  all  her  anguish  was 
dissolved  in  sweetness.  "  Mother  !  Mother  !  "  she  cried, 
stretching  up  her  arms  to  the  vision.  "  Comfort  thee,  my  child  !  " 
came  the  dulcet  tones.    "  Methusalem-is  not  dead,  but  sleeping  !  " 

At  the  glad  news  Jinny  burst  into  tears,  and,  in  the  mist  they 
made,  her  mother  faded  away.  But  she  walked  in  soft  happiness 
back  to  the  house,  and  said  her  prayers  of  gratitude  and  went 
believingly  to  bed  and  slept  as  when  she  was  a  babe. 

So  long  did  she  sleep  that  when  she  woke,  the  old  man  was 
standing  over  her  again,  just  as  the  morning  before,  save  that 
now  he  was  in  his  everyday  earth-coloured  smock  and  wore  a 
frown  instead  of  a  wedding-look,  and  the  sunshine  was  streaming 
into  the  room. 

"  Where's  my  breakfus.  Jinny  ?  "  he  said  grumpily. 

"  I'm  so  sorry,"  she  said,  yawning  and  rubbing  her  eyes.  "  I 
must  have  overslept  myself."  And  then  she  remembered  Mr. 
Pennymole's  story,  and  a  smile  came  over  her  face. 

"  There's  nawthen  to  laugh  at,"  he  said  savagely.  *'  Ef  ye  goo 
out  at  bull's  noon,  ye' re  bound  to  forgit  my  breakfus.  And  that 
eatin'  his  head  off  too  !  Ye  know  there's  no  work  for  him.  Ye 
dedn't  want  to  bring  him  back." 

"  Back  ?  "  she  almost  screamed.     "  Is  Methusalem  back  ?  " 

"  As  ef  ye  dedn't  know ! "  he  said,  disgusted. 

Disregarding  him  and  everything  else,  she  sprang  out  of  bed, 
rolling  the  blanket  round  her,  and  with  bare  feet  she  sped  to  the 
stable.  But  she  had  hardly  got  outside  before  the  jet  of  hope 
had  sunk  back.  It  was  but  another  of  her  grandfather's 
delusions. 

But  no !  0  incredible,  miraculous,  enchanting  spectacle ! 
There  he  was,  the  dear  old  beast,  not  dead  but  sleeping,  exactly 
as  the  Angel-Mother  had  said,  not  a  hair  of  his  mane  injured, 
not  an  inch  of  his  tail  less,  and  never  did  two  Polynesian  lovers 
rub  noses  half  so  passionately  as  this  happy  pair. 


HORSE,  GROOM,  AND  BRIDE  431 

Jinny  would  have  rubbed  his  nose  still  more  adoringly  had  she 
known — as  she  knew  later — the  role  it  had  played  in  his  salva- 
tion. The  threatening  thunder-clouds  had  made  Mr.  Skindle  put 
off  his  slaughtering  till  the  morning,  so  that  he  himself  might 
get  home  before  the  storm  broke.  The  doomed  horses  he  left 
shut  in  his  field — ^who  cared  whether  they  got  wet  ?  But  as  soon  as 
the  coast  was  clear  of  Skindle  and  his  latest-lingering  myrmidons, 
Methusalem  had  simply  lifted  the  latch  of  the  gate  with  his 
nose  and  gone  home.  Mr.  Skindle,  oblivious  of  this  accomplish- 
ment of  his,  though  he  had  seen  it  practised  on  his  never-forgotten 
journey  with  Jinny,  had  imagined  him  conclusively  corralled. 
Mr.  Charles  Mott,  returning  with  some  boon  companions  from  a 
distant  hostelry  where  the  draughts  were  more  generous  than 
he  was  allowed  at  "  The  Black  Sheep,"  was  among  the  few  who 
saw  the  noble  animal  hurrying  homewards,  and  he  told  Jinny  the 
next  Tuesday  that  she'  ought  to  enter  Methusalem  for  the 
Colchester  Stakes.  His  unusual  rate  of  motion  was  also  reported 
by  Miss  Gentry,  who,  lying  awake  with  a  headache  after  the 
excitement  of  the  day,  had  heard  him  snort  past  her  window 
just  when  the  storm  was  ebbing.  He  must  have  sagely  sheltered 
while  it  raged  and  have  arrived  at  Blackwater  Hall  soon  after 
Jinny  had  beheld  her  vision. 

But  as  yet  Jinny  attributed  the  miracle  to  her  Angel-Mother. 
And  what  a  happy  Sunday  morning  was  that,  with  the  church 
bells  all  clearly  ringing  "Come  and  thank  God  and  her!"  She 
did  not  fail  to  obey  them,  though  not  without  a  sharp  turn  in 
that  padlock,  and  with  the  little  key  safe  in  her  bosom.  And 
having  happily  ascertained  from  Mother  Gander  that  the  five- 
pound  note  was  valid  in  pieces,  she  dropped  them  into  Mr. 
Skindle' s  letter-box  together  with  remarks  that  drew  heavily  on 
her  Spelling-Book's  "  Noun  Adjectives  of  Four  Syllables." 
Cadaverous  (Belonging  to  a  Carcase)  ;  Execrable  (Hateful, 
Accursed)  ;  Sophistical  (Captious,  Deceitful)  ;  Sulphureous  (Full 
of  Brimstone)  ;  and  Vindictive  (Belonging  to  an  Apology)  were 
among  her  proudest  specimens.  They  were  not  calculated  to 
encourage  Mr.  Skindle's  matrimonial  hopes. 


CHAPTER  XI 

WINTER'S  TALE 

Thou  harrein  ground,  whome  tvinUrs  wrath  hath  tvastgdy 
Art  made  a  myrrhour  to  behold  my  plight. 

Spenser,  "  The  Shepheards  Calendar." 


Pitter-patter  v/as  the  dominant  note  of  the  rest  of  the  year. 
The  prayer  for  rain  had  been  only  too  successful,  and  the  black- 
birds whistled  their  thanksgiving  over  their  worms.  But 
humanity  grumbled  with  its  wonted  ingratitude.  There  were 
warm  and. vvindy  days,  and  cold  and  sparkling  days,  but  the  roads 
never  quite  dried  up.  The  short  cuts  to  Frog  Farm  became 
impassable  for  Bundock  ;  in  the  coursing  season  the  long-grassed 
marshlands  clove  to  the  spectators'  gaiters,  and  when  the  beagles 
were  out.  Jinny  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  Farmer  Gale  and 
breathless  bumpkins  floundering  over  sodden  stubble-fields  or 
ankle-deep  in  mud,  what  time  baffled  whippers-in  piped  plain-, 
tively,  or  jetted  husky  cries  at  their  scattered  pack.  Glad  as 
she  was  to  eat  of  the  leporine  family,  she  detested  sport  for 
sport's  sake,  even  the  fox-hunting,  though  her  poultry-run  had 
just  been  raided  and  a  dog-fox  had  snarled  fearlessly  at  Nip 
from  the  ditch.  Once,  when  the  hare,  crossing  her  cart  with 
the  dogs  at  his  very  heels,  cleared  the  broad  ditch  with  a  magni- 
ficent leap.  Jinny  clapped  her  hands  as  though  at  a  Flippance 
melodrama. 

Sport  for  life's  sake  was  another  affair,  and  she  looked  back 
regretfully  to  the  good  old  times  described  by  her  grandfather, 
when  the  farmer,  having  finished  his  day's  work,  would  go  out 
rabbit-shooting  to  preserve  his  crop,  or  when  the  fox  could  be 
shot,  snared,  or  even  hooked,  as  a  dangerous  animal.  Now,  when 
poor  old  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  had  found  Jinny's  vulpine  enemy  dead 
in  one  of  his  gins,  caught  by  a  claw,  that  rising  vet.,  Mr.  Skindle, 


WINTER'S  TALE  433 

was  called  in  to  make  a  post-mortem  examination,  and  it  was 
only  because  he  certified  that  the  sacred  animal  had  died  of 
starvation,  and  not  been  poisoned,  that  the  old  woodman  escaped 
the  worst  rigours  of  the  unwritten  law.  As  it  was,  his  crime  in 
setting  the  trap  at  all  on  land  not  his  ow^n,  and  his  failing — 
through  a  new  attack  of  rheumatism — to  examine  it  before  the 
fox  died,  almost  resulted  in  his  being  officially  driven  from  his 
derelict  hut  into  theChipstone  poorhouse;  a  fate  he  only  escaped 
by  passionate  asseverations  that  he  had  always  been  and  till  death 
would  continue  "  upright,'^  by  which  he  meant  "  independent." 

That  was  in  one  sense  more  than  Jinny  could  call  herself, 
for  her  store  of  barley  or  rye  for  her  breadmaking  was  danger- 
ously low,  and  she  had  come  to  depend  a  good  deal  on  the 
food  brought  by  this  queer  raven  at  prices  more  corresponding 
to  his  gratitude  than  to  market  value.  She  still  peddled  her 
goats'  milk  for  a  trifle  among  her  neighbours,  the  abundant 
blackberries  gave  her  fruit  (though  she  could  not  afford  the  sugar* 
for  jam),  she  had  gathered  nuts  as  industriously  as  a  squirrel, 
she  ensured  jelly  for  her  grandfather  by  making  it  out  of  her 
own  apples,  while  by  exchanging  the  bad  apples  with  a  neighbour 
who  kept  pigs,  she  got  Methusalem  some  "green  fodder"  in  the 
shape  of  tares.  But  it  was  an  unceasing  strain  to  keep  things 
going  in  the  old  style,  and  Uncle  Lilliwhyte's  spoils  were  more 
than  welcome,  for  his  activities  varied  from  codling-fishing  to 
eel-spearing,  and  from  fowling  on  the  saltings  to  collecting  glass- 
wort  for  pickling.  His  rabbits  and  hares  came  with  suspiciously 
injured  legs,  and  Jinny  seeing  the  bloody-blobbed  eyes  could 
only  hope  they  had  not  been  long  in  his  wire  loops.  As  she  felt 
the  long,  warm,  beautiful  bodies,  she  had  to  tell  herself  how 
pernicious  they  were  to  the  root-crops  or  the  young  apple-trees. 

More  legitimate  spoils  arrived  when  the  old  man  was  well 
enough  to  crawl  to  the  nearest  salt-marsh  with  his  ancient  fowling- 
piece,  for,  when  the  ebb  bared  the  mud,  countless  sea-birds  came 
to  feed,  and  more  than  once  a  brace  of  mallards  offered  Jinny  a 
vivid  image  of  her  inferiority  to  the  rival  carrier,  so  gorgeously 
shimmering  was  the  male's  head,  so  drab  the  female's.  For 
while  the  driver  of  the  Flynt  Flyer  had  been  blossoming  out  in 
the  frock-coat  he  had  first  sported  for  the  Flippance  wedding, 
Jinny  had  been  refraining  even  from  her  furbished-up  gown, 
reserving  it  mentally  for  a  last  resource  and  feeling  herself  lucky 
that  it  was  still  unpawned.     But  one  day  when  the  vehicles  met 

2£ 


434  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

— for  despite  the  heaviness  of  the  going  Jinny  foolishly  and 
extravagantly  continued  to  plod  her  miry  rounds — she  caught 
Will  looking  down  so  compassionately  at  her  splitting  shoes  that 
she  straightway  resolved  to  buy  another  pair  at  any  sacrifice. 
Savage  satisfaction  at  her  defeat  she  could  have  borne,  but  this 
pity  she  would  not  brook.  Better  sell  the  goats,  especially  as 
Gran'fer  would  need  a  new  flannel  shirt  for  the  v^inter.  The 
animals  were  not  very  lucrative,  and  one  out  of  the  three  would 
suffice  to  supply  milk  for  herself  and — by  its  bleat — her  grand- 
father's sense  of  stability.  But  she  had  reckoned  insufficiently 
with  this  last :  he  admitted  he  had  no  great  stomach  for  her 
goats'  cheese,  and  felt  a  middling  need  for  flannel,  but  he  clung 
to  his  nannies  as  though  without  them  his  world  would  fall  to 
pieces.     That  her  shoes  were  doing  so,  he  did  not  remark. 

In  the  end — though  she  shrank  from  the  three  golden  balls  on 
her  own  behalf — there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  pledge  her 
wedding-frock  under  pretence  it  was  a  customer's.  But  in  her 
dread  lest  the  pawnbroker  should  recognize  the  dress,  the  sharp- 
ness which  extracted  the  utmost  from  him  for  her  distressed 
chents  was  replaced  by  a  diffident  acceptance  of  barely  enough 
for  the  shoes. 

This  discussion  about  her  live  stock,  however,  gave  her  an  idea. 
She  carted  part  of  her  poultry  to  and  fro  in  a  crate,  and  their 
clucking  and  fluttering  gave  an  air  of  Hveliness  to  the  business 
and  made  even  Will  Flynt  believe  it  had  woke  up  again,  especially 
as  he  saw  the  smart  new  shoes  on  the  little  feet,  supplemented 
presently  by  a  new  winter  bonnet,  which,  despite  his  experience 
with  his  own  mother's  bonnet,  he  did  not  divine  was  merely  an 
old  one,  whitened  and  remodelled  by  Miss  Gentry. 

Thus  the  equinoctial  season  found  the  little  Carrier  still  upon 
her  seat,  defiant  of  competition  and  radiating  prosperity  from 
the  crown  of  her  bonnet  to  the  sole  of  her  shoe.  Even  the  plain- 
ness of  her  skirt  and  shawl  seemed  only  an  adaptation  to  the 
weather.  But  she  would  have  been  better  off  by  her  log  fire, 
making  the  local  variety  of  Limerick  lace  with  which  she  was  on 
other  days  trying  to  eke  out  her  infrequent  sixpences.  Though 
the  rain  abated  towards  the  end  of  October,  halcyon  days  and 
even  hours  alternated  with  hours  and  days  of  turbulent  winds 
and  hailstorms,  and  the  sky  would  change  in  almost  an  instant 
from  a  keen  blue,  with  every  perspective  standing  out  clear  and 
sun- washed,  to  a  lowering  roof  of  clouds  spitting  hailstones,  and 


WINTER'S  TALE  435 

a  gentle  wind  would  be  succeeded  by  half  a  gale  that  stripped 
their  flames  from  the  poplars  and  sent  the  reddened  beech-leaves 
whirling  fantastically.  In  November  these  blasts  grew  more 
biting,  Nip  cowered  in  his  basket  within  the  cart,  and  the  calves 
in  the  fields  sheltered  themselves  behind  the  blown-down  trunks 
of  elms.  Shivering,  Jinny  reminded  herself  that  the  real  object 
of  her  rounds  was  the  bi-weekly  gorge  at  Mother  Gander's. 

They  were  indeed  more  generous  than  ever,  these  midday  meals, 
so  relieved  was  Jinny's  hostess  to  find  she  had  not  really  been 
baptized  into  Mr.  Fallow's  church.  Mrs.  Mott  even  had  the 
Gaffer's  beer-barrel  replenished  gratis.  Not  that  she  had  any 
suspicion  of  the  girl's  straits.  Though  parcels  were  no  longer 
left  at  the  bar  for  Jinny,  the  poor  woman  was  too  taken  up  with 
her  own  troubles  to  draw  the  deduction  from  that.  Beneath  her 
imposing  blue  silk  bodice  beat  a  wounded  heart,  and  in  Jinny's 
society  she  found  consolation  for  the  lack  of  her  husband's. 

For  a  quarrel  had  begun  between  the  Motts  which  was  destined 
to  shake  all  Chipstone  with  its  reverberations.  Mr.  Charles 
Mott  had  profanely  refused  to  be  "  Peculiar "  any  longer.  The 
endeavour  to  draw  him  to  the  Wednesday  services  had  proved 
the  last  straw.  To  him  religion  and  Sunday  were  synonyms,  and 
he  had  been  willing  to  concede  the  day  to  boredom.  He  was  a 
sportsman  and  was  ready  to  play  fair.  But  his  wife  was  not 
playing  fair,  he  considered,  when  she  pretended  that  ratting, 
coursing,  and  dicing  remained  reprehensible  even  on  weekdays. 
Expostulatory  elders  had  vainly  pointed  out  to  him  that  it  was 
only  the  Churchman  who  made  so  much  of  Sunday  and  so  little 
of  every  other  day,  and  Deacon  Mawhood  had  been  compelled 
to  order  several  goes  of  rum  at  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  to  fi.nd 
opportunities  of  explaining  to  its  landlord  that  his  cravat-pin 
and  plethora  of  rings  were  an  offence.  Let  him  note  how  his 
admirable  wife  had  given  up  her  gold  chain.  "  Well,  /  don't 
want  no  chain,"  Charley  had  retorted,  and  his  cronies  still 
acclaimed  the  repartee.  He  had,  in  fact,  broken  his  chain  and 
would  not  even  go  to  the  Sunday  chapel. 

"  You  and  me  have  both  got  our  cross  to  bear,"  Deacon  Maw- 
hood sighed  sympathetically  to  the  distraught  lady.  "  There's 
saints  among  us  as  won't  even  keep  a  cat  or  a  bird  because  the 
thought  of  them  may  come  'twixt  the  soul  and  chapel.  Oi  some- 
times suspicion  it's  a  failing  in  roighteousness  to  keep  a  husband  or 
a  wife — partic'lar  when  they  riots  on  your  hard-earned  savings." 


436  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

The  grievances  which  the  poor  hostess  of  "  The  Black  Sheep  " 
— ^now  become  a  keeper  of  one — poured  into  Jinny's  ear,  fully 
confirmed  all  the  Spelling-Book  had  told  her  of  the  wickedness 
of  man — its  preoccupation  with  the  male  gender  had  left  woman 
unimpugned.  But  it  was  more  under  Mr.  Mawhood's  encourage- 
ment than  Jinny's  that  this  female  pillar  of  the  chapel  now  sent 
the  Bellman  round  Chipstone  with  his  bell  and  his  cocked  hat 
and  his  old  French  cry,  to  inform  all  and  sundry  that  she  would 
not  be  responsible  for  her  husband's  debts. 

It  was  a  procedure  which  scandalized  Chipstone.  Since  the 
day  when  a  neighbouring  village  had  set  up  its  "  cage  "  for 
drunken  men  in  the  pound,  with  the  other  strayed  beasts,  no 
such  blow  had  been  dealt  at  the  dignity  of  man.  But  Charley 
and  his  crew  met  it  with  derisory  laughter.  All  Mrs.  Mott's 
prgperty  was  his — or  rather  theirs  :  he  could  sell  the  lease  of 
''  The  Black  Sheep  "  over  her  head,  if  she  did  not  behave  herself. 
Nay,  he  could  sell  her  very  self  at  the  market  cress,  the  bolder 
maintained,  not  without  citing  precedent.  By  many  the  Bell- 
man was  blamed  for  compromising  the  dignity  of  his  sex  :  by 
none  so  contemptuously  as  by  Bundock.  For  the  Crier,  not 
taking  his  own  announcement  seriously,  had  embellished  it  with 
facetious  gags  that  set  the  street  roaring.  "  I  wouldn't  say  if 
they  were  funny,"  complained  Bundock.  ^'  Anybody  can  play 
on  the  word  *  Peculiar,'  and  certainly  peculiar  it  is  to  put  your 
husband  in  the  stocks,  so  to  speak.  I  don't  deny  Charley's  legs 
sometimes  need  that  support.  But  what  can  you  expect  if  you 
marry  your  pot-boy  ?     You  must  take  pot-luck.     He,  he,  he  !  " 

To  which  the  bulk  of  Chipstone  Christendom  added  that  how- 
ever prodigal  the  ex-potman,  he  did  not  waste  so  much  money 
as  his  wife  lavished  on  that  ridiculous  sect  of  hers.  A  hundred 
pounds  for  the  bishop  at  his  jubilee  birthday,  it  was  said  with 
bated  breath — "  a  noice  fortune  !  "  Really,  Charley  was  only 
too  long-suffering  not  to  take  his  property,  including  his  wife, 
more  strictly  in  hand,  and  when  it  was  learnt  that  lawyers' 
letters  were  actually  passing  between  the  bedrooms  of  the  parties 
there  was  general  satisfaction.  In  short,  public  opinion  was  as 
outraged  by  Mrs.  Mott's  treatment  of  her  husband  as  by  her 
original  acquisition  of  him.  The  only  difference  was  that  Mr. 
Mott  was  now  a  martyr. 

The  insult  to  the  male  sex  was  especially  resented  by  the 
tradesmen  to  whom  the  martyr  stood  so  profitably  indebted, 


WINTER^S  TALE  437 

and  under  their  incitement  a  new  ban  might  have  been  put  on 
"  The  Black  Sheep  "  but  for  the  reluctance  of  Will  Flynt,  who, 
though  second  to  none  in  reprobation,  refused  to  shift  the  head- 
quarters of  his  coach  to  the  rival  establishment.  That  would 
only  be  hurting  Charley's  business,  he  pointed  out,  and  indirectly 
themselves.  The  economic  aspects  of  revenge  had  not  occurred 
to  these  muddle-heads,  and  they  were  grateful  to  the  coach- 
driver  for  the  reminder.  They  did  not  know  that  his  true 
motive  for  sticking  to  "  The  Black  Sheep  "  was  that  Jinny  was 
to  be  encountered  in  its  courtyard  on  Tuesdays  and  Fridays. 
Nor  was  Jinny  herself  aware  how  profusely  she  was  repaving 
Mrs.  Mott  for  her  meals. 

As  if  this  scandal  among  the  "  Peculiars  "  was  not  enough^ 
Deacon  Mawhood  himself  came  into  ill  odour  more  literally.  For 
in  carrying  out  his  agreement  to  clear  the  Gentry  cottage  of  rats 
he  had  committed  the  crime  of  which  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  had  been 
acquitted  :  he  had  operated  by  poison,  to  wit,  and  the  stench 
of  the  dead  vermin  in  their  holes  nearly  crazed  the  excellent 
dressmaker,  already  sufficiently  distracted  by  the  silence  of  her 
bosom  friend,  Mrs.  Flippance,  swallowed  up  in  Boulogne  as  in  a 
grave.  Miss  Gentry,  like  Mother  Gander,  now  wept  on  Jinnv's 
shoulder,  though  it  had  to  be  done  outside  the  garden  gate,  and 
even  there  the  wafts  caught  one.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the 
prediction  that  she  would  be  drowned,  did  she  ever  set  foot  on 
a  boat,  she  would  have  been  in  Boulogne  weeks  ago  with  her 
darling,  but,  like  a  ghost,  she  could  not  cross  water.  Indeed  she 
would  already  have  been  a  ghost  but  for  her  strong  smelling-salts, 
her  decoction  of  scabious  against  infection,  and  the  fumigation 
of  the  cottage.  Jinny  did  not  shrink  from  bearding  her  spiritual 
superior  in  his  bar  and  giving  Mr.  Joshua  Mawhood  a  taste  of 
her  tongue.  If  that  was  his  notion  of  religion,  he  ought  to  be 
cast  out  of  his  chapel,  and  she  would  let  Mrs.  Mott  know  of 
what  a  hoggish  "  illusion  "  he  had  been  guilty — {Illusion,  Sham 
or  Cheat— "The  Universal  Spelling-Book"). 

But  the  Deacon,  standing  on  the  letter  of  his  bond,  vv^as  imper- 
meable to  reproach — nay,  had  a  sense  of  righteousness,  as  having 
incidentally  punished  a  distributor  of  tracts  no  less  offensive 
than  his  dead  rats.  Not  even  the  remonstrances  of  Mr.  Fallow, 
who  had  arranged  the  compromise  over  Mrs.  Mawhood's  dress 
could  bring  the  Deacon  to  a  sense  of  sin,  still  less  of  compensa- 
tion.    "  Her  rats  were  eating  the  pears  like  hollamy,"  he  said, 


438  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  and  Oi've  cleared  cottage  and  orchard  of  'em."  Mr.  Fallow  was 
so  interested  to  know  what  *'  hoUamy  "  was,  that  he  went  away 
with  a  diminished  sense  of  failure.  But  neither  dictionaries  nor 
octogenarians  could  throw  any  light  on  its  etymology.  The 
most  plausible  conjecture  he  could  reach  was  that  it  must  be 
"  hogmanay,"  gifts  made  at  the  year's  end. 

II 

But  if  the  Peculiar  Faith  was  thus  involved  in  scandal,  Church- 
manship  did  not  fail  to  provide  its  quota  of  gossip  to  the  months 
that  ended  a  fateful  year.  It  was  not  only  that  Miss  Blanche  of 
Foxearth  Farm  had  collected  the  scalp  of  yet  another  suitor  (and 
one  who,  as  Bundock's  own  eyes  had  witnessed  at  the  Flippance 
wedding-feast,  had  been  wantonly  encouraged) ;  it  was  that  the 
minx,  whose  brother  Barnaby  went  about  in  October  saying 
Will  Flynt  was  not  good  enough  for  her,  became  openly  engaged 
in  November  to  that  obviously  inferior  specimen,  Mr.  Elijah 
Skindle.  And  old  Giles  Purley,  tired  of  vagaries  so  incongruous 
in  a  churchwarden's  family,  was,  said  Bundock's  father,  im- 
periously hurrying  on  the  match. 

Although  it  was  the  postman  who  was  the  reference  on  the 
liberties  permitted  to  Will  at  the  wedding  breakfast,  it  was  his 
bedridden  parent  who  became  the  leading  authority  on  the  new 
Blanche  engagement.  That  was  because  Barnaby,  disappointed 
of  the  wider  life  of  the  Tony  Flip  theatre,  with  no  winter  prospect 
but  that  of  chopping  down  undergrowth  and  laying  it  out  in 
long  rows  for  hoops  and  hurdles,  and  receiving  no  consolation 
from  Jinny  when  their  vehicles  passed,  had  discovered  in  the 
postman's  youngest  sister  a  being  even  more  beauteous,  and, 
when  he  had  to  take  the  trap  into  Chipstone,  never  failed  in 
devoted  attendance  on  the  sick-bed.  It  was  thus  that  all  the 
world  knew  that  the  Flippances  had  not  written  once  from. 
Boulogne,  not  even  to  send  on  the  promised  cheque  for  the 
wedding-breakfast. 

But  even  Bundock's  father  had  not  the  true  history  of  the 
engagement,  constructing  as  he  did  from  Barnaby's  chatter  a 
facile  version  of  a  "  better  match  "  :  how  dear  'Lijah  was  coining 
money  far  quicker  than  Will  with  his  petty  fares  and  commissions, 
and  fast  ousting  Jorrow,  and  wdth  what  elegant  furniture  he  was 
fitting  up  the  bridal  bedchamber.      Barnaby  himself  did  not 


WINTER^S  TALE  439 

know  that  with  the  gradual  vanishing  of  his  sister's  theatrical 
and  operatic  hopes,  Blanche,  immeasurably  more  embittered  and 
disillusioned  than  himself,  had  sought  in  vain  to  win  back  Will, 
and  had  thrown  herself  first  strategically  and  then  despairingly 
into  the  arms  of  Elijah,  who,  summoned  prof essionally  to  the  Farm, 
had  found  unhoped-for  consolation  for  his  lost  Jinny.  Tongues 
would  have  wagged  still  more  joyously  had  it  been  known  that 
Will  for  his  part  was  trying  to  win  back  Jinny,  who  in  her  turn 
was  as  adamantine  to  him  as  he  to  Blanche.  The  two  Carriers 
met  not  seldom  on  the  miry,  yellow-carpeted  roads  awhirl  with 
flying  leaves,  or  in  the  rainy  courtyard  of  "  The  Black  Sheep," 
and  for  each  the  scene  at  once  shifted  to  a  sunny  tangled  fairy- 
land where  the  wood-pigeon  purred,  and  oak,  elm,  beech,  and 
silver  birch  in  ample  leaf  rose  in  a  crescent,  with  crisp  beech-nuts 
underfoot,  and  baby  bracken.  But  not  even  Nip  could  effect 
any  visible  communication.  Much  more  gracious  was  Jinny  to 
Barnaby,  as  soon  as  she  was  relieved  of  his  "  passing  "  adoration. 

The  weather  improved  for  a  space  in  mid-November.  There 
was  a  bite  in  the  air  and  the  sheep-bells  tinkled  keenly  from  the 
pastures.  The  morning  hoar-frosts  held  till  noon.  A  great  red 
ball  of  sun  and  a  pale  yellow  crescent  moon  would  shine  together 
in  the  heavens,  early  sunsets  seen  through  bare  branches  seemed 
to  fill  them  with  a  golden  fruitage  that  changed  slowly  to  lemon, 
and  the  haystacks  rose  magically  through  enchanted  hazes.  But 
the  cold  only  made  Jinny  hungrier  and  the  earth-beauty  sadder. 
It  was  as  if  she  had  already  forgotten  the  blessing  of  Methusalem's 
return,  and  as  if  carrying  was  not  after  all  the  heart's  deepest 
dream — especially  with  nothing  to  carry. 

It  was  a  relief  to  be  blocked  occasionally  by  Master  Peartree's 
sheep,  billowing  along  like  a  yellow  Nile,  and  to  exchange  con- 
versation with  the  shepherd,  now  at  the  most  leisured  moment 
of  his  year.  Patiently  she  would  hear  how  the  sheep  got 
ravenous  in  the  high  cold  winds,  why  he  was  driving  them  out 
of  yon  danger-zone  of  rape  and  turnip,  and  how  the  only  real 
anxiety  between  now  and  Christmas  was  that  one  might  fall  on 
its  back,  or  the  hunt  frigliten  the  ewes  :  for  soon  somehow  he 
would  be  speaking  of  his  next-wall  neighbours  in  Frog  Farm,  and 
somehow  the  family  would  always  narrow  to  W^ill.  "  A  grumpy, 
runty  lad,"  he  described  him  once.  *'  Sometimes  he  goos  about 
full  o'  mum  :  other  times  you  can  yer  him  through  the  wall 
grizzlin'  and  growlin'  like  my  ould  dog,  time  my  poor  missus^had 


440  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

her  fust  baiby.  He'd  ha'  torn  the  child  to  pieces,"  he  went  on, 
diverging  into  an  exposition  of  how  sheep-dogs  had  to  be  trained 
to  prepare  for  babies.  But  she  cut  it  as  short  as  she  dared, 
inquiring,  "  But  who'd  he  be  jealous  of  ?  "  "  The  baiby — Oi'm 
explainin'  to  you  !  "  he  said.  "  No,  I  mean,  who's  young  Mr. 
Flynt  jealous  of  ?  "  she  asked,  wondering  how  Will  could  know 
that  she  had  been  shedding  such  gracious  smiles  on  Barnaby. 
And  when  the  shepherd  replied  "  'Lijah  Skindle,  in  course,"  she 
winced  perceptibly.  But  though  the  sting  of  the  reply  rankled, 
she  was  not  so  sure  as  the  rest  of  the  world  that  it  was  true. 


Ill 

The  abundance  of  black  sloes,  they  said,  foretold  a  hard  winter, 
and  as  the  winter  approached.  Jinny's  outlook  grew  darker. 
Even  to  keep  a  roof  over  their  heads  was  not  easy  with  the 
thatch  everywhere  holed  by  starlings..  Driblets  came  through 
the  old  man's  bedroom  ceiling  and  were  caught  in  a  pail.  And 
as  for  the  walls,  Daniel  Quarles  cursed  the  builder  who  had  put 
in  such  bad  mortar  that  "  big  birds  came  and  picked  the  grit 
out  o'  the  lime."  The  rain  drove  even  through  the  closed 
lattices.  To  keep  the  living-room  dry,  he  had  made  Jinny 
purchase  putty,  of  which  he  daubed  no  less  than  three  pounds 
over  the  rotting  woodwork  of  the  window.  A  stumpy  piece  of 
log  he  also  nailed  to  the  bottom  of  the  window  to  block  up  the 
crevices,  though  he  could  do  nothing  with  the  top  of  the  kitchen 
door  through  the  little  vine  that  grew  over  it,  and  which  in  some 
years  yielded  several  pounds  of  small  white  grapes. 

And  if  it  was  high  time  that  her  Hall  should  be  patched  up,  Jinny 
often  thought  with  commiseration  of  poor  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  in 
his  leaky  hut  throughout  all  these  rains.  Even  from  a  selfish 
point  of  view,  his  health  was  a  consideration.  If  he  broke  up,  a 
main  source  of  supply  would  disappear,  and  any  day  he  might 
be  at  least  temporarily  paralysed  by  his  rheumatism,  and  need 
provender  instead  of  supplying  it.  A  frail  reed  indeed  to  rely 
on,  and  Jinny  began  to  wonder  if  she  had  been  wise  in  training 
Nip  so  carefully  not  to  hunt  rabbits.  With  food  and  shelter  thus 
alike  insecure,  Jinny,  remembering  the  formula  of  her  sect, 
resolved  to  "  ask  in  faith."  Perhaps  too  conscious  a  resolution 
impaired  the  faith — at  any  rate  Providence,  even  with  an 
accessory  at  court  in  the  shape  of  the  Angel-Mother,  proved 


WINTER'S  TALE  441 

stony,   and  the  Angel-Mother  herself  appeared  limited  in  her 
powers,  however  limitless  her  sympathy.     She  could  not  even 
make  folks  demand  tambour  lace.     Jinny  began  to  wonder  if  no 
terrestrial  powers  remained  to  be  invoked  in  the  old  man's  behalf. 
What  had  become  of  all  the  children,  whose  names  were  recorded 
in  the  fly-leaf  of  his  hereditary  Bible,  and  only  some  of  whom  had 
their  deaths  chronicled  ?     Cautiously  she  probed  and  pried  into 
corners    she   had    never    dared    approach    before,    instinctively 
feeling  them  full  of  cobwebs  and  grime.     And  her  instinct  w^as 
justified — each  child  had  been  more  "  obstropolus  "   than  the 
others.     One  of  the  daughters  was  always  "  a  slammacks  "  and 
had  married  beneath  her,  another — a  beauty  even  fairer  than 
Jinny's  mother — had,  on  the  contrary,  caught  a  London  linen- 
draper  on  his  holidays  and  looked  down  on  her  father,   who 
would  starve  rather  than  eat  a  bit  of  her  bread.     One  boy  had 
"  'listed,"  another  been  beguiled  into  the  Navy  by  that  "  dirty 
little  Dap,"  a  third — a  lanky  youth  nicknamed  "  Ladders  "^ — 
had  gone  to  London  to  see  the  coronation  of  King  WilHam,  and 
had  disappeared,  while  his  devil-may-care  younger  brother  had 
shot  a  rabbit  at  night  and  been  transported  to  "  Wan  Demon's 
Land,"  a  name  that  made  Jinny  shudder.     This  last  was  the 
only  son  of  whose  present  locality  he  was  even  vaguely  aware, 
though,  oddly  enough,  the  sailor  son  had  once  sent  him  word 
that,  landing  with  a  boat's  crew  upon  an  island  called  "  Wan 
Couver,"  he  had  come  upon  "  Ladders  "  in  tKe  service  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  Company,  living  in  a  stockaded  fort  called  after 
the  Queen,  and  surrounded  by  naked,  painted  Indians.     But  as 
none  of  these  children  were  ever  to  dare  cross  their  father's 
doorstep  again,  there  did  not  seem  much  help  to  be  looked  for 
from  any  quarter  of  the  globe  that  might  contain  them.     And 
Jinny  was  sorry  she  had  not  left  the  cobwebbed  corners  in  their 
original  mystery,  for  as  the  stories  multiplied,  the  old  man  began 
to  loom  as  a  sort  of  sinister  raven  that  drives  out  its  own  off- 
spring, though  gradually  she  came  to  see  behind  all  the  stories 
the  same  tale  of  a  cast-iron  religion  against  which  the  young 
generation  broke  itself.    Or  was  it  only  a  cast-iron  obstinacy,  she 
asked  herself,  after  working  out  that  the  first  at  least  of  these 
family  jars  must  have  occurred   before  her  grandfather's   oft- 
n  arrated  encounter  with  John  Wesley. 

It  was  with  a  new  astonishment  that  she  learnt  he  had  been 
careful  to  make  his  will,  lest  Blackwater  Hall  should  fall  into  the 


442  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

hands  of  his  youngest  surviving  rascal.     "  And  who've  you  left 
it  to  ?  "  she  inquired  innocently. 

"  Why,  who  has  the  nat'ral  right  to  it  ?  Sidrach,  in  course, 
as  ought  to  ha'  had  it  'stead  o'  me,  he  bein'  the  eldest.  He's 
been  cut  out  o'  the  wote,  too,  what  goos  with  the  property  and 
what's  worth  pounds  and  pounds." 

He  was  so  convinced  of  the  righteousness  of  this  will,  and 
appeared  so  genuinely  fond  of  his  brother,  that  Jinny  w^as  afraid 
to  suggest  the  strong  probability  of  Sidrach  predeceasing  him. 
Indeed  Sidrach  began  now  to  play  a  larger  and  larger  part  in  his 
thoughts,  his  mind  reverted  to  the  early  days  of  the  "  owler," 
and  gradually  the  prosperity  of  those  days  shone  again  over  the 
patriarch  in  "  Babylon."  Sidrach  now  loomed  as  a  star  of  hope, 
and  Daniel  spoke  constantly  of  paying  his  long-projected  visit 
to  him  at  Chelmsford,  designing  apparently  to  drive  the  cart 
himself,  and  to  inform  his  brother  of  the  magnanimous  bequest 
that  was  coming  to  him — a  legacy  that  would  suggest  to  Sidrach 
corresponding  magnanimity  in  the  living  present.  Afraid  the 
Gaffer  would  actually  set  forth  on  this  dangerous  and  visionary 
quest.  Jinny  did  her  best  to  discredit  the  notion  of  Sidrach's 
opulence,  and  quoted  "  RolUng  stones  gather  no  moss,"  but  the 
Gaffer  argued  tenaciously  that  if  his  eldest  brother  had  not  been 
comfortably  off,  he  would  have  come  to  seek  the  shelter  of  their 
roof-tree,  or  at  least  applied  for  their  assistance,  as  he  must  be 
getting  old,  or  at  least  (he  modified  it)  too  old  to  work.  Jinny 
offered  to  write  to  Sidrach  to  inquire,  but  her  grandfather  could 
not  find  the  ten-year-old  letter  inviting  the  visit.  No,  he  would 
go  over  and  find  Sidrach  instead,  and  Jinny  was  reduced  to 
pointing  out  from  day  to  day  how  unfavourable  the  weather  was 
for  the  excursion.  As  the  days  grew  shorter  and 'shorter,  the 
project,  finding  no  opposition  to  nourish  it,  seemed  to  subside. 
Jinny  was  almost  conscience-stricken  when  one  Sunday  after 
church  Mr.  Fallow  showed  her  a  paragraph  in  the  Chelmsford 
Chronicle^  stating  that  "  another  link  with  the  past  "  had  been 
broken  by  the  death  "  last  Monday  from  a  fall  downstairs  "  in 
the  Chelmsford  poorhouse  of  a  centenarian  named  Sidrach 
Quarles,  who  claimed  to  be  a  hundred  and  five,  and  who  was 
certainly  well  over  the  hundred,  his  recollections,  which  were  a 
source  of  entertainment  to  all  \dsitors,  going  back  to  the  days 
when  England  was  still  ruled  by  a  "  furriner,"  meaning  thereby 
George  XL 


WINTER'S  TALE  443 

The  shock  Jinny  received  at  this  was  more  of  life  than  of 
death.  It  made  her  realize  she  had  never  quite  believed  in 
Sidrach's  existence,  and  this  sense  of  his  substantiality  almost 
swamped  the  minor  fact  of  his  decease.  She  saw  no  reason  why 
he  should  not  remain  substantial.  Now  that  she  had  perhaps 
been  guilty  of  baulking  her  grandfather's  last  chance  of  seeing 
his  beloved  brother,  she  did  not  feel  equal  to  robbing  him  of  his 
last  hope  of  assistance.  He  might  even  agitate  himself  over 
making  a  fresh  will,  and  it  was  far  better  to  let  Providence  or 
the  lawyer  folk  decide  on  his  heir.  No  doubt  when  the  dread 
necessity  arose,  the  youngest  son  would  be  raked  up  from  some- 
where. But  that  dark  moment  still  seemed  far.  The  longer  her 
grandfather  lived,  the  more  she  had  got  used  to  the  idea  of  his 
never  dying.  True,  Sidrach  had  died,  though  his  habit  of  living 
had  been  even  more  ingrained,  but  they  did  not  take  proper  care 
of  you  in  a  workhouse,  and  besides  he  had  died  of  an  accident. 
She  would  keep  Daniel  from  that  fate,  even  as  she  would  keep 
him  from  the  poorhouse. 

As  she  sat  at  his  side  by  the  fire  that  Sunday  night,  knitting 
him  a  muffler,  her  thoughts  were  playing  so  pitifully  over  poor 
old  Sidrach  in  his  bleak  pauper's  grave,  that  she  was  not  at  all 
surprised  when  her  grandfather  announced  with  sudden  decision 
that  he  would  go  to  see  Sidrach  the  very  next  day.  With 
a  chill  at  her  heart  as  though  a  dead  hand  had  been  placed  on 
it,  she  told  him  gently  that  it  was  nonsense  and  that  he  must 
w^ait  now  till  the  spring. 

But  he  shook  his  head  obstinately.  "  Don't  seem  as  ef  Oi'U 
last  out  till  the  spring." 

She  laughed  forcedly.     "  What  an  idea  !  " 

"  Not  unless  there's  an  election  and  Oi  can  buy  grub  with  my 
wote-money,"  he  explained.  "  And  Oi  ain't  heerd  as  Parlyment 
is  considerin'  the  likes  of  us." 

"You've  always  had  plenty  to  eat!"  she  protested,  colour- 
ing up. 

"  That  ain't  enough  in  the  larder  when  Oi  looks,  ne  yet  for 
Methusalem  in  the  barn.  Ye've  got  to  have  a  store  like  the  beer 
in  my  barrel.  Where's  my  flitch  ?  Where's  my  cheeses  ? 
Same  as  we're  snowbound,  like  the  year  Sidrach  went  away, 
where  would  Oi  get  my  Chris'mus  dinner  ?  'Tis  a  middlin'  long 
way  to  Babylon,  but  Oi'U  start  with  the  dayHght  and  be  back 
between  the  lights,  and  ef  Oi'm  longer,  why  the  moon's  arly. 


444  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Oi'll  be  proper  pleased  to  see  dear  Sidrach  again — he  larnt  me 
my  letters  and  Oi'll  bring  him  back  to  live  with  us,  now  he's 
gittin'  oldish.  It  ain't  good  for  a  man  to  live  alone,  says  the 
Book,  and  that'll  be  good  for  us  too,  he  bein'  as  full  o'  suvrans 
as  a  dog  of  fleas." 

"  Nip  isn't  full  of  fleas,"  she  said  with  mock  anger,  hoping  to 
make  a  diversion.     "  Why,  you  scrub  him  yourself  !  " 

But  he  went  on,  unheeding.  "  Daniel  Quarles  has  alius  been 
upright,  and  he'd  sooner  die  than  goo  to  his  darter  or  the  poor- 
house." 

She  thought  miserably  that  the  poorhouse  was  where  he  would 
have  to  go  to  find  any  traces  of  his  beloved  Sidrach,  and  she  set 
herself  by  every  device  of  logic  or  cajolery  to  discourage  this  re- 
vived dream  of  the  journey.  He  might  not  even  find  Sidrach  in 
such  a  big  city,  she  now  hinted,  but  he  laughed  at  that.  Every- 
body knew  Sidrach,  "  a  bonkka,  hansum  chap  with  a  mosey  face 
and  a  woice  like  the  bull  of  Bashan  and  as  strong  too.  Wery 
short  work  he'd  ha'  made  of  Master  Will.  Carry  him  in,  indeed ! 
Carried  him  out — and  with  one  hand — that's  what  Sidrach 
would  ha'  done  !  Why,  he's  tall  enough  to  light  the  street- 
lamps  in  Che'msford  !  " 

These  street-lamps,  Jinny  gathered,  still  figured  in  his  mind 
as  of  oil,  and  she  was  able  by  dexterous  draughts  on  his  reminis- 
cences to  put  off  the  evil  day  of  his  expedition.     But  whenever 
there  was  visible  dearth  at  table,  the  thought  of  his  rich  brother, 
flared  up  again. 

Could  Blackwater  Hall  perhaps  be  sold,  she  thought  desperately, 
and  the  money  spent  on  his  declining  years.  The  thought  was 
stimulated  by  a  meeting  of  the  Homage  Court  which  came  from 
railhead  in  the  "  Flynt  Flyer,"  and  before  which  Miss  Gentry's 
landlady  as  a  copyholder  had  to  do  "  suit  and  service  "  in  the 
Moot  Hall  to  the  Lords  of  the  Manor. 

But  Jinny  ascertained  that  Beacon  Chimneys,  a  ramshackle 
place  with  much  land,  had  been  bought  up  recently  by  Farmer 
Gale  for  his  new  bride  at  fifty  shillings  an  acre,  farm  and  buildings 
thrown  in;  a  rate  at  which  Blackwater  Hall  would  not  even 
yield  the  forty  shillings  supposed  to  be  its  annual  value  as  a 
voting  concern — whereas  the  Gaffer's  view,  cautiously  extracted, 
ran  :  "  Ef  you  spread  suvrans  all  over  my  land,  each  touchin'  the 
tother,  you  pick  up  your  pieces  and  Oi  keep  my  land."  More- 
over, Mr.  Fallow,  to  whom  she  had  broached  the  idea,  reminded 


WINTER'S  TALE  445 

her  feelingly  that  old  people  could  not  be  moved.  He  was 
keenly  interested,  however,  to  learn  that  the  tenure  was  an 
example  of  Borough  English  and  hunted  up  the  local  Roll  of 
Customs  (7th  Edward  IV)  proclaiming  that  "  Time  out  of  the 
Mind  of  Man  "  the  "  ould  auncient  Custom  of  the  Bourow  "  had 
been  for  the  heritage  to  go  to  the  "  youngest  Sonne  of  the  first 
wife." 

At  heart  Jinny  was  glad  the  idea  of  selling  the  Hall  was 
impracticable  :  for  what  would  have  become  of  Methusalem  and 
the  business  of  "  Daniel  Quarles,  Carrier  "  ?  To  surrender  before 
the  "  Flynt  Flyer  "  would  have  been  a  bitter  pill  indeed. 

IV 

When  all  but  the  last  swallows  had  departed,  and  Christmas 
began  to  loom  in  the  offing,  the  Sidrach  obsession  resurged,  and 
there  being  a  spell  of  bright,  clear  weather,  the  only  way  she 
could  devise  to  stave  off  the  expedition  was  to  pretend  to  under- 
take it  herself.  This  was  the  more  necessary  as  she  was  not 
certain  the  scheme  did  not  cover  a  crafty  design  to  drive  Methu- 
salem back  to  the  knacker's  for  the  five  pounds.  She  would 
start  very  early  and  go,  not  to  Chelmsford,  but  to  "  Brandy  Hole 
Creek."  Instead  of  writing  her  Christmas  letter  to  Commander 
Dap,  she  would  visit  him  personally.  He  was,  after  all,  a  relative 
and  would  not  like  to  see  his  brother-in-law  starve — of  course 
.  she  would  accept  nothing  for  herself.  Already  she  had  intended 
to  skirt  the  subject  at  Christmas,  but  to  ask  assistance  openly 
was  painful,  while  if  one  was  too  reticent  one  might  be  misunder- 
stood.    In  conversation  one  could  feel  one's  way. 

So  on  a  misty  morning  of  late  November,  when  the  peewits 
were  calling  over  the  dark  fields,  she  set  out,  the  old  man  watching 
her  off  with  a  lantern. 

"And  do  ye  bring  back  Sidrach,"  he  called  after  her,  "sow vre 
can  all  live  happy." 

For  answer  she  blew  her  horn  cheerily,  feeling  this  was  less  a 
lie  than  speech.  She  would  come  back  with  help  of  some  sort — 
that  was  certain.  Whether  she  would  confess  that  the  help 
came  from  Commander  Dap  or  would  attribute  it  to  Sidrach,  or 
whether  it  would  be  wiser  to  come  back  with  the  discovery  of 
Sidrach' s  death,  trusting  to  its  staleness  to  blunt  the  blow  and 
to  the  news  of  Dap's  assistance  to  overcome  it,  or  whether  it 


446  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

would  be  imprudent  to  mention  Dap  at  all,  not  merely  because 
it  would  be  hard  to  explain  how  she  had  met  the  Commander  of 
the  Watch  Vessel  at  Chelmsford,  but  because  her  grandfather  in 
his  inveterate  venom  against  Dap  was  capable  of  refusing  his 
favours — on  all  these  distracting  alternatives  she  hoped  to  make 
up  her  mind  during  the  day.  Here,  too,  she  would  perhaps  have 
to  feel  her  way.  But  she  now  miserably  reaHzed  the  wisdom  of 
the  Spelling-Book's  "  writing-piece  "  :  "  Lying  may  be  thought 
convenient  and  profitable  because  not  so  soon  discovered ;  but 
pray  remember,  the  Evil  of  it  is  perpetual :  For  it  brings  persons 
under  everlasting  Jealousy  and  Suspicion  ;  for  they  are  not  to 
be  believed  when  they  speak  the  Truth,  nor  trusted,  when 
perhaps  they  mean  honestly."  She  meant  honestly  enough,  God 
knew,  but  into  what  a  tangle  she  was  getting.  She  consoled 
herself  with  the  thought  that  anyhow  there  would  be  no  pre- 
tending that  day  in  her  business — to  spare  Methusalem  on  so 
long  a  journey  the  empty  boxes  had  been  left  at  home. 

Single  drops  oozed  upon  her  as  she  started,  but  as  the  mist 
hfted,  though  it  revealed  sodden,  blackened  pastures  on  both 
sides  of  her  route,  the  underlying  betterness  of  the  weather 
manifested  itself,  and  soon  under  an  arching  blue  Methusalem 
was  almost  trotting  over  withering  bracken  and  fallen  leaves  in 
a  world  of  browns  and  yellows,  while  an  abnormally  friendly 
robin  perching  on  the  cart-shaft,  and  the  scarlet-berried  bryony 
festooning  the  hedgerows,  contributed  with  the  gleaming  hoUy- 
berries  to  colour  her  darkling  mood.  There  was  a  certain 
refreshment,  too,  in  going  off  by  this  new  route,  where  she  for 
her  part  was  as  unknown.  It  was  odd  how  the  mere  turning  her 
back  on  the  Chipstone  Road  transformed  everything.  Even  the 
path — though  this  was  not  so  pleasant  for  Methusalem — ^had  at 
first  an  upward  tendency,  and  her  mere  passing  evoked  stares 
and  comments.  This  surprised  her  in  turn  till  she  remembered 
Will's  disapprobation.  She  did  not  realize  that  the  visible 
emptiness  of  the  cart,  with  its  implication  that  she  was  not 
plying,  only  driving  it  to  some  male  headquarters,  mitigated  the 
sensation,  and  she  congratulated  herself  there  was  no  old  client 
to  observe  the  absence  of  cargo.  In  the  first  few  miles  she  met 
no  soul  she  knew  except  the  taciturn  lout  who  had  once  directed 
her  to  Master  Peartree's  shearing-shed,  and  who  was  now  pre- 
paring a  feeding-ground  for  the  flock,  pulling  out  mangolds  with 
a  picker  and  hurling  them  over  the  hurdled  field  from  a  broken- 


WINTER'S  TALE  447 

pronged  fork.  The  sheep  had  to  go  to  this  higher  ground  for  fear 
of  floods,  he  informed  her  in  a  burst  of  communicativeness,  and  it 
wasn't  half  as  eatable. 

Passing  a  row  of  thatched,  black-tarred  cottages  at  a  moment 
when  the  mothers  were  coming  to  the  garden  gates  to  speed 
their  broods  to  school,  she  offered  lifts  till  her  space  was  packed 
with  little  ones.  The  old  cart  was  now  alive  with  youth  and 
laughter,  and  the  flocks  of  rooks  from  the  elms  were  out-chattered. 
The  road  lay  between  great  fields  flanked  by  broad  ditches,  along 
which  argosies  of  yellow  leaves  went  sailing,  and  there  were 
shooters  with  dogs,  happy  duck-ponds,  old  towers  and  steeples, 
black  barns,  gabled  old  houses  with  verge-boards  over  the 
windows,  quaint  inn-signs  and  mossy-tiled  granges,  and  the 
ground  kept  humping  itself  and  dropping  more  erratically  than 
her  home  circuit,  but  never  sufficiently  to  spoil  the  sublime  flatness 
in  which  single  figures  stooping  to  turn  over  the  soil  showed  like 
quadrupeds  in  a  vast  circle.  She  must  needs  go  a  bit  out  of  her  way 
to  reach  the  school,  which  lay  in  a  little  town  on  the  estuary, 
and  it  was  a  thrilling  moment  when  from  her  seat  she  had  her 
first  far-off  glimpse  of  the  very  waters  that  had  begl amour ed  her 
childhood — outwardly  it  was  only  the  gleam  as  of  a  white  river 
with  hazy  land  beyond,  and  on  the  hither  side  a  few  black  huts 
looking  almost  like  vessels  ;  but  over  everything  was  wrapped  a 
dreamy  peace,  which  the  clamour  of  the  actual  children  could 
not  penetrate,  while  in  her  nostrils — though  it  was  surely  too  far 
off  to  be  wafted  to  her — there  arose  the  strange,  salty,  putrid 
odour  of  fenland,  offensive  and  delectable.  And  as  the  road 
curved  slowly  towards  the  shore,  all  the  charm  and  mystery  of 
childhood  seemed  to  be  in  those  barges  with  the  red-brown  sails, 
those  grassy  knolls  and  unlovely  mud-flats,  in  which  rotting 
boats  stuck  half  sunken. 

Before  she  could  deposit  her  charges  in  their  classrooms 
some  had  dropped  off  and  were  looking  for  treasure  in  the 
flat,  dyke-seamed  fields.  They  had  arrived  too  early  for  school, 
they  explained.  But  she  felt  rewarded  for  carrying  them 
to  the  waterside  when  she  espied  the  long,  low  huU  and  great 
brown  sail  of  Bidlake's  barge.  With  a  blast  of  her  horn  she 
summoned  the  trio  of  females,  but  only  the  twins  mounted  to 
the  deck  to  wave  hands  at  her  as  the  broad  wherry  came  tacking 
and  gliding  past,  the  shaggy  Ephraim  explaining  in  an  indecorous 
shout  that  the  missus  was  to  be  "  laid  aside  "  again,  and  this  time  he 


448  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

was  looking  around  for  a  nice  quiet  lodging  on  shore  for  her  and  the 
girls.  How  handsome  Sophy  and  Sally  were  growing,  she 
thought,  how  charmingly  they  had  smiled,  just  as.  if  she  had 
never  left  off  bringing  them  presents.  What  a  comfort  they  were 
so  grown  up  now;  they  should  soon  be  fending  for  themselves. 

AittT  the  barge  was  wafted  away,  she  remained  on  the  shore  a 
few  minutes,  fascinated  by  the  lattice-work  reflection  of  the 
clouds  on  the  water,  which  through  their  scudding  over  it  against 
the  stream  seemed  to  be  going  in  opposite  directions  at  once. 
She  did  not  know  why  this  phenomenon  was  agitating  the 
recesses  of  her  being ;  but  suddenly  there  flashed  up  from  the 
obscure  turmoil  the  lines  of  Miss  Gentry  in  her  sibylline  mood  : 

When  the  Brad  in  opposite  ways  shall  course^ 
Lo  I  Jinny^s  husband  shall  come  on  a  horse ^ 
And  Jinny  shall  then  learn  Passion's  force. 

Of  course  this  was  not  the  Brad,  nor  was  it  really  going  two 
ways  at  once,  and  in  any  case  who  wanted  a  husband  or  Passion  ? 
Qucking  so  suddenly  to  Methusalem  that  his  movement  scattered 
some  poultry  pecking  around  him  amid  golden  straw,  she  turned 
up  through  the  High  Street.  At  a  fishmonger's  shop  she  got 
down  and  bought  a  pennyworth  of  bloaters  for  her  grandfather's 
supper,  the  man  sliding  them  off  a  rod  where  they  hung  like 
blackened  corpses  from  a  gibbet.  She  was  half  minded  to 
inspect  the  shop  of  the  "Practical  Tailor"  next  door,  to  see  if 
she  could  not  pick  up  something  cheap  and  serviceable  for  the 
old  man's  winter  wear,  but  there  was  nothing  in  the  little  house- 
window,  not  even  a  roll  of  cloth,  except  illustrations  of  men's 
clothing  so  ultra-fashionable  and  dear  that  she  was  frightened  to 
go  in.  "Pacha  D'Orsay  Chesterfields,  Codringtons,  Sylphides, 
Pekoes,  Zephyr  Wrappers,  etc.,  etc.,  every  description  of  Winter 
Coat  " — here  was  assuredly  what  he  needed.  But  one  pound 
five  ?  Who  was  there  behind  the  sea-wall  that  could  rise  to 
such  prices  ?  Possibly  it  was  here  that  Mr.  Flippance  had  got 
his  wedding  equipment.  She  returned  sadly  to  her  cart,  not 
even  noticing  that  all  these  fashionable  pictures  were  simply  cut 
out  of  the  catalogue  of  the  great  Moses  &  Son,  London. 

The  road  now  led  again  through  great  grass-lands  under 
shimmering  clouds  floating  in  a  spacious  blue,  and  with  gentle 
slopes  and  hillocks,  though  little  streams  had  replaced  the 
broad  ditches.      There  were  rabbits  taking  the  air  that  showed 


WINTER'S  TALE  449 

white  scuts  at  the  approach  of  Nip.  Far  to  the  right  she  left 
the  saltings  with  their  grazing  cattle,  but  she  could  still  see  them 
from  her  driving-board,  and  the  marshes  stretched,  humped  and 
brown  and  infinitely  interstreaked,  a  mud-maze  with  purple 
herbage  and  motley  sea-birds. 

Then  suddenly  there  was  a  thunder  and  clatter  behind  her, 
and  she  pulled  her  horse  mechanically  to  the  left  to  avoid  a 
coach,  not  realizing  till  it  slowed  down  that  this  was  the  "  Flynt 
Flyer's "  day  for  the  district.  Her  heart  beat  fast,  almost 
painfully,  and  she  went  scarlet  with  the  thought  that  Will  would 
think  she  had  come  purposely  on  his  track.  Why,  oh  why,  had 
she  just  chosen  that  day  ?  There  was  no  turning  to  be  seen  and 
desperately  she  steered  Methusalem's  nose  towards  a  farm-gate, 
prepared  to  trespass,  but  it  proved  to  be  only  a  "  lift  "  for 
wagons,  opened  by  raising  the  rail  from  its  slots,  a  feat  which 
Methusalem's  nose  could  not  achieve.  She  leaped  down  and 
tried  to  pull  it  up  herself,  but  her  fingers  were  trembling,  and  in 
an  instant  Will  was  at  her  side,  hat  gracefully  in  hand,  the  rail 
lifted  up,  and  the  gate  held  aside  for  her  passing.  Blushing  still 
more  furiously  under  the  gaze  of  the  coach  passengers,  she  led 
Methusalem  through,  and  as  she  passed  she  said  with  a  sweet 
smile  :   "  Thank  you." 

This  was  all  the  audience  heard  or  saw,  but  what  was  really 
said  and  substantially  understood  by  both  principals  was  : 

Will  :  "  Oh,  my  dear  Jinny,  how  pretty  and  kissable  you  look 
in  that  becoming  new  bonnet,  and  isn't  it  silly  to  be  trying  to 
compete  with  me  along  this  road,  when,  though  you  get  business 
from  goodness  knows  who,  you  can't  even  keep  your  old  cus- 
tomers on  your  own  route  ?  You  haven't  got  the  tiniest  parcel, 
I  see,  nor  any  hope  of  one.  Really  you  would  do  better  to 
accept  my  offer  of  a  partnership,  or  better  still  to  get  off  the  roads 
altogether,  for  the  winter  is  going  to  be  a  hard  one,  and  perhaps 
if  we  dropped  our  silly  sullen  silence  and  began  to  find  out  each 
other's  good  points  again,  who  knows  but  what  we  might  come 
to  another  sort  of  partnership  ?  Anyhow  I  am  delighted  to 
open  this  lift  for  you,  but  what  the  devil  you  are  going  to  do  in 
a  field  just  being  ploughed  is  what  I  shall  watch  with  amuse- 


ment." 


Jinny  :  "  You  perfectly  unbearable  Mr.  Flynt !  How  mean 
of  you  to  come  spying  into  my  empty  cart !  If  you  want  to 
know,  I  am  not  out  on  business  to-day  at  all,  it's  a  little  friendly 

2F 


450  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

call  I  am  making  on  the  farmer.  I  haven't,  like  you,  to  work 
all  the  week  round  to  scrape  together  enough  to  feed  my  horses. 
Two  days  a  week  keeps  me  in  luxury — ay,  and  Gran'fer  too.  And 
don't  pretend  to  be  so  gay  and  happy — I  know  what  a  grumpy, 
runty  chap  you  are  at  home,  and  how  you're  still  hankering  after 
that  Blanche  Jones  who  has  thrown  you  away  like  an  old  shoe. 
Or  if  it's  my  refusal  to  be  partners  with  you  that's  rankling,  and 
you  are  even  thinking  after  all  of  a  closer  partnership,  then  all 
I  can  say  is,  you  must  be  the  village  idiot  if  you  fancy  I'll  put 
up  with  Blanche's  leavings.  Don't  imagine  that  silly  old  coach 
with  the  silly  wanty-hook  and  skewers  painted  on  it  is  very 
attractive  to  me.  Why,  if  you  were  to  come  to  me  in  a  coach 
of  gold  like  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  with  six  milk-white 
steeds  spruced  up  with  flowers  and  ribbons  like  Methusalem  on 
May  Day,  and  say :  '  I  love  you,  Jinny,  come  and  sit  in  silks 
and  diamonds  on  my  box-seat,'  I  should  up  with  my  horn  and 
blow  a  blast  of  scorn,  for  I  hate  and  despise  you,  and  how  dare 
you  come  ogling  me  before  all  the  coach  ?  " 

And  still  retaining  her  sweet  smile.  Jinny  gazed  at  the  shirt- 
sleeved  ploughmen,  who  though  vaguely  astonished  at  the 
invasion  of  their  field,  continued  their  stolid  operations.  Jinny 
arrested  her  cart  to  watch  with  equal  stolidity  the  white  whirls 
and  long  lines  of  fluttering  gulls  that  followed  the  slow-moving 
ploughs,  with  such  a  twittering  and  circling  and  looking  so 
beautiful  over  the  reddish  earth  and  under  the  blue  sky.  There 
was  beauty,  too,  she  felt,  in  the  youth  who  from  his  white  basket 
sprinkled  seeds  with  a  graceful  motion,  and  when  he  smiled  at 
her,  she  did  not  hesitate  to  remark  in  her  sweetest  tone  on  the 
rainy  autumn,  spinning  out  the  hygrometric  conversation  tUl 
Will  felt  it  almost  a  flirtation.  Fuming  and  fumbhng  with  the 
top  rail,  he  took  as  much  time  as  possible  to  readjust  it  in  its 
slots.  But  in  this  game  of  patience  he  knew  he  must  be  beaten  : 
however  amusedly  he  might  pretend  to  watch  her  pretences,  his 
passengers  would  compel  him  to  go  on,  and  so,  in  no  amused 
state  of  mind,  at  a  moment  when  the  gulls  as  by  a  magic  clearance 
disappeared  to  a  bird,  he  followed  their  example.  When  the 
whirlwind  of  his  passing  had  died  in  the  distance.  Jinny  came 
back  again  through  the  lift,  with  the  feeling  that  Methusalem 
must  think  her  a  fool,  and  wondering  if  he  were  not  right. 

Soon  after,  she  fell  in  with  a  carter  who  was  going  her  way 
with  sacks  of  flour  for  his-  master,  and  as  they  jogged  along. 


WINTER'S  TALE  451 

conversing  pleasantly,  after  the  failure  of  his  attempt  to  chaff 
and  flirt,  she  was  surprised  to  learn  that  he  had  till  recently 
plied  as  a  carrier  on  this  very  road,  but  had  been  ousted  by  the 
"  Flynt  Flyer."  It  had  never  occurred  to  her  that  there  were 
other  victims,  but  as  he  went  on  to  denounce  Will,  she  found 
herself  defending  the  rights  of  competition  and  pointing  out 
the  service  the  coach  rendered  to  the  neighbourhood,  and  the 
carter  fell  back  upon  another  grievance  about  which  he  was  even 
more  embittered.  On  one  of  his  last  journeys  a  man  he  had 
carried  from  the  Creek  had  got  off  without  paying,  and  he  had 
foolishly  let  him  go,  thinking  he  was  *'  a  Brandy  Hole  chap  " 
and  would  be  returning  by  the  same  vehicle.  But  he  had 
vanished  from  his  ken.  "  Oi  thought  he  was  a  Brandy  Hole 
chap,"  he  kept  repeating  plaintively. 

She  was  glad  to  shed  him  at  "  The  Jolly  Bargee,"  a  small  inn 
with  a  sanded  tap-room  and  no  visible  taps,  where,  amid  a  company 
she  saw  already  gathered  over  frothing  mugs,  he  would  doubtless 
bewail  the  competition  of  the  coach  and  the  trickery  of  the  fare 
he  had  taken  for  "  a  Brandy  Hole  chap." 

Noon  was  tolling  from  the  square  church-tower  when  Jinny 
espied  again  her  .treasured  picture  of  it,  rising  from  a  harmony 
of  golden  ricks  and  lichen-spotted  tiles,  just  as  on  that  happy, 
enchanted  day  when  she  had  journeyed  to  the  funeral  of  her 
mother's  Aunt  Susannah.  How  quickly  one  came — she  thought 
with  pleased  astonishment — free  of  the  detours  and  delays  of 
custom,  or  the  pretence  thereof  1  There  would  be  ample  time  to 
visit  the  grave  of  her  father  and  mother  before  going  on  to  the 
Watch  Vessel,  especially  as  it  was  thus  on  her  way.  But, 
remembering  with  a  sad  smile  the  dispute  as  to  whether  her 
grandfather  could  go  to  his  sister's  funeral  in  his  cart,  she 
took  care  to  draw  up  her  shabby  vehicle  in  a  nook  beyond  the 
lych-gate.  Nip  had  vanished — like  the  "  Brandy  Hole  chap  " — 
she  found  ;  probably  he  was  also  at  "  The  Jolly  Bargee."  Leav- 
ing Methusalem  to  his  w.ell-earned  if  not  well-filled  nose-bag,  she 
returned  to  the  gate. 

The  monkey-trees  and  weeping  willows  were  unchanged, 
though  in  the  path  leading  to  the  church-porch  there  was  an 
avenue  of  young  rose-bushes  which  she  did  not  remember,  and 
screened  by  them,  to  the  right,  a  freshly  dug  grave  which  made 
her  shudder.  She  hastened  towards  the  crumbling  tower — still 
more  crumbled  now — which  her  memory  connected  with  the 


452  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

sacred  spot.  The  blackberry-bushes  still  swathed  it,  though 
they  were  now  stripped  of  their  fruit,  and  in  its  shadow  she  found 
again,  not  without  surprise,  the  familiar  stone,  the  object  of  so 
much  whimsical  wrangling.  Still  Roger  Boldero  lay  "  safely 
neaped  in  Christ."  She  was  almost  certain  that  her  grandfather 
had  sent  a  couple  of  pounds  to  Commander  Dap  to  have  the 
stone  changed,  since  the  inscription,  it  appeared,  could  not  well 
be  emended  otherwise.  Yes,  surely  he  had  ordered  that 
"  neaped  "  should  be  turned  into  "  asleep,"  for  she  remembered 
counting  the  letters  and  rejoicing  to  find  them  the  same  in 
number.  But  on  the  whole  she  was  pleased  the  word  had  not 
been  changed  :  her  Angel-Mother  had  wanted  it,  she  remembered, 
in  memory  of  her  happiness  with  Roger  Boldero.  As  she  stood 
there,  musing  on  these  two,  feeling  her  mother's  soft  cheek 
against  hers  and  recalling  that  smoke-reeking,  hairier,  burlier,  yet 
somehow  more  shadowy  figure,  many  pictures  flashed  and 
waned,  and  most  vividly  of  all  came  the  vision  of  her  grand- 
father's strong  shoulder  supporting  the  coffin,  and  the  kindly 
old  Commander  leading  her  off  stealthily  to  this  very  spot,  and 
she  heard  the  death-bell  tolling  again  with  its  long  solemn 
pauses. 

And  then  suddenly  with  a  queer  little  thrill  she  awoke  to  the 
fact  that  the  death-bell  was  tolling,  that  a  company  in  black  was 
bearing  a  coffin.  She  moved  farther  behind  the  tower,  she  was 
not  in  black,  and  felt  almost  an  interloper.  Presently  there 
came  from  th^  rose-bushes  the  sonorous  voice  of  a  clergyman 
intoning  the  great  words.  She  did  not  want  to  be  delayed 
further,  nor  did  she  want  to  pass  by  the  grief-stricken  group, 
which  consisted — she  saw  as  she  peeped  from  her  hiding-place — of 
half  a  dozen  men  and  women,  all  elderly  and  all  weeping  :  with 
a  small  band  of  sailors  in  the  background,  whose  left  arms  bore 
black  silk  handkerchiefs  tied  in  a  bow.  She  looked  around  for 
another  way  out  of  the  churchyard,  and  finding  a  side  gate 
escaped  almost  happily,  jumped  on  her  cart,  and  drove  off 
towards  the  shore,  thinking  pleasantly  of  the  genial  little  Dap 
and  the  dinner  she  would  not  be  too  late  for ;  a  meal  which  now, 
after  this  long  drive,  began  to  seem  the  paramount  consideration. 
The  village  rose  russet  from  the  trees,  and  she  curved  round 
exquisite  corners  of  white  cottages  with  Christmas  roses  in  their 
gardens,  and  presently  she  came  out  by  the  grass-covered  sea- 
wall.    She  hardly  saw  the  sordidness  of  the  shore — the  litter  of 


WINTER^S  TALE  453 

pigs,  poultry,  boats,  sheds,  barrels — so  great  a  seascape  burst 
upon  her,  broken  by  a  long  narrow  island,  that  added  subtle 
shades  and  hazes  to  the  far-spreading  shimmer  and  fantasy,  the 
water  glinting  and  moving,  dotted  with  red-sailed  smacks  and 
barges.  Even  the  slimy  posts  that  stuck  up  from  it  near  the 
shore  had  a  romantic  air,  being  young  tree-trunks  that  still 
stretched  odd  limbs. 

But  all  this  glory  faded  into  nothingness  when,  catching  sight 
of  the  Watch  Vessel  moored  on  the  "  hard"  of  gravel,  at  the 
place  where  she  had  first  patted  Methusalem,  she  saw  that  the 
flag  was  at  half-mast.  She  scarcely  needed  to  make  the  inquiry : 
the  flag,  the  funeral,  the  nautical  handkerchiefs,  all  rushed  into 
a  black  unity.     Dear  old  Commander  Dap  was  dead. 

V 

A  perverse  imp  kept  telling  her  that  the  funeral  meats  would 
be  unusually  abundant.  But  she  had  no  heart  to  board  the 
Watch  Vessel,  to  encounter  these  unknown  fellow-mourners. 
She  wanted  to  mourn  in  solitude.  And  her  quest  had  failed. 
The  last  hope  for  her  grandfather  had  been  extinguished — Dap 
had  followed  Sidrach — and  the  best  thing  to  do  was  to  get  home 
as  quickly  as  poor  Methusalem  could  manage  it.  He  should 
rest,  not  here  where  she  might  meet  the  returning  Daps  and 
perhaps  be  recognized  through  Daniel  Quarles's  cart,  but  when 
they  got  to  "  The  Jolly  Bargee,"  where  she  must  have  a  bit  of 
bread  and  cheese  brought  out  to  her.  Yet  she  could  not  tear 
herself  away  from  this  squalid,  sublime  waterside,  and  driving 
along  the  cart-route  behind  the  sea-wall  to  a  safe  distance,  she 
got  out  near  a  little  wooden  pier  and  walked  on  the  rough  earth 
of  the  sea-wall,  which  was  luxuriant  with  pigweed  and  sea-beet, 
strewn  with  wisps  of  hay  and  straw  from  passing  carts,  and 
covered  with  dead  little  white-shelled  crabs.  There  was  some- 
thing akin  to  her  mood  in  the  pleasant  pain  of  the  acrid  mud- 
smell. 

At  "  The  Jolly  Bargee "  she  was  jarred  by  the  slow  easy 
laughter  from  the  tap-room — the  trickery  of  the  "  Brandy  Hole 
chap  "  was  still  under  facetious  debate.  Before  her  set  face,  the 
gorged  Nip,  rejoining  her  at  the  inn-door  with  conscious  drooping 
tail,  turned  on  his  back  and  grovelled  guiltily  :  but  she  ignored 
his  abasement,  and  having  gulped  down  her  snack  of  bread  and 


454  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

cheese — an  unwelcome  and  unforeseen  expense — drove  on  with 
the  same  brooding  air.  She  was  dazed  by  the  wonder  and 
pathos  of  the  little  Commander's  death,  the  whole  genial  breath- 
ing mass  become  as  insensitive  as  his  glass  eye  :  would  he  get 
that  back  at  the  Resurrection,  she  pondered,  or  would  there  be 
his  original  eye  ?  Thence  she  passed  to  the  thought  of  the  dead 
Sidrach,  the  large  handsome  man  of  a  hundred  and  five,  strong 
as  a  bull  of  Bashan,  whom  she  was  supposed  to  be  visiting,  and 
she  wondered  dully  what  report  of  him  she  should  bring  back  to 
her  grandfather.  Abandoning  herself  as  usual  to  Methusalem's 
guidance  in  this  deep  brooding,  she  discovered  after  an  hour  or 
so  that  in  his  ignorance  of  these  roads  he  had  gone  miles  out  of 
their  way,  down  Smugglers'  Lane,  and  when  after  half  an  hour 
of  readjustment  she  had  got  on  the  right  homeward  road,  her 
own  subconscious  gravitation  to  the  waterside  took  her  back  to 
it.  And  while  she  gave  Methusalem  a  rest  here,  the  white  moon 
and  the  early  November  sunset  began  to  brood  over  the  mud- 
flats, transfiguring  them  with  strange  scintillant  gold,  and  Jinny 
felt  a  divine  lesson  in  the  transfiguration,  and  the  solemn  voice 
of  the  clergyman  echoed  in  her  ears  :  "I  am  the  Resurrection 
and  the  Life."  Doubtless  the  Commander  was  already  in 
communion  with  the  Angel-Mother. 

The  problem  of  Sidrach  was  still  unsolved  when  the  feeding- 
field  she  had  seen  preparing  in  the  morning  loomed  again  on 
her  vision  like  a  reminder  of  the  urgency  of  that  question.  She 
envied  Master  Peartree's  sheep  munching  so  imperturbably  in 
their  hurdles  while  she  had  been  going  through  all  these  emotions 
and  perplexities.  With  their  black  noses  and  feet  they  looked, 
she  thought,  as  though  they  had  been  drinking  from  a  pool  of 
ink,  and  her  thoughts  wandered  again  from  her  problem,  and 
she  let  Methusalem  drink  from  a  pool  of  water.  Though  it  was 
only  four  o'clock,  the  moon  had  turned  a  pale  ochre  and  was 
shining  full  and  high  in  the  heavens,  its  continents  clearly 
showing.  There  was  no  sound  save  the  chewing  of  the  sheep, 
the  gulping  of  her  horse,  the  wistful  tinkling  of  a  wether's  bell, 
and  from  afar  the  fainter  clanging  of  a  cow-bell.  Even  Nip, 
feeling  unforgiven,  was  subdued.  Life  was  beautiful  after  all, 
she  felt,  as  she  watched  the  great  splashes  of  sunset  below  the 
moon,  the  glimmering  rose-tint  on  the  horizon,  the  glint  upon 
the  pool,  the  tangle  of  magical  gold  in  the  branches.  Somehow 
a  way  would  be  opened  for  her  through  this  network  of  mendacity. 


WINTER'S  TALE  455 

But  by  the  time  she  got  to  her  door,  the  Common  was  covered 
again  with  a  grey  mist,  just  oozing  rain,  and  Blackwater  Hall 
was  a  place  of  shrouded  terrors.  No  Hght  was  showing  through 
the  shutters  or  through  the  chinks  in  door  or  window,  and  she 
had  a  sudden  clammy  intuition  that  her  grandfather  had  solved 
her  problem  for  her  by  the  simple  process  of  dying  like  Sidrach 
and  the  Commander.  Silent  and  weird  lay  thatch  and  white- 
wash under  the  moon.  She  hammered  at  the  house-door  and 
then  at  the  shutters,  her  heart  getting  colder  and  colder. 

She  tried  the  door  again,  then  hearing  Nip  barking  mysteriously 
from  within,  she  went  round  to  the  kitchen-door.  To  her  joy  and 
amazement  it  was  wide  open,  and  a  ray  of  moonlight  resting  on 
a  little  pool  of  beer  on  the  brick  floor  showed  that  the  tap  of  the 
beer-barrel  which  was  kept  there  was  dribbling.  Even  in  that 
anxious  moment  her  economical  instinct  prevailed,  and  as  she 
was  tightening  the  tap,  there  permeated  through  the  living-room 
door  a  heavenly  snore — no  lesser  adjective  could  convey  the 
relief  it  brought.  With  a  bound  she  was  up  the  couple  of  stone 
steps  and,  unlatching  the  door,  she  sent  a  faint  blue  glimmer 
from  the  kitchen  into  the  shuttered  darkness,  that  was  relieved 
only  by  the  flicker  of  an  expiring  lamp  and  a  last  spark  from  a 
dying  log.  In  that  dim  discord  of  lights  she  saw  her  grand- 
father's head  on  the  thumb-holed  tray,  his  hair  and  beard  a  dull 
grey  spread,  dividing  a  darker  jug  from  two  beery  glasses.  The 
absence  of  his  Bible-pillow  seemed  symbolic  of  his  degradation. 

Who  had  been  with  him  ?  she  wondered.  What  boon  companion 
had  tempted  him  from  his  habitual  moderation  ?  She  could  not 
imagine.  She  shook  him  to  awaken  him,  and  Hfted  up  his  head. 
But  it  fell  back  in  a  stupor,  and  under  the  draught  from  the 
kitchen-door  the  lamp-flicker  went  out.  She  groped  about, 
replenishing  the  lamp  and  trying  to  light  it  with  a  spill  from  the 
fire,  but  the  greying  log  only  charred  the  paper.  She  fumbled 
in  vain  among  the  china  shepherdesses  on  the  mantelpiece  for 
her  flint  and  the  iron  and  steel  gauntlet,  and  going  out  to  get  her 
lighting-up  matches  from  her  cart,  she  overturned  the  other  arm- 
chair that  stood  in  a  novel  situation  at  the  table — probably  the 
guest  had  drawn  it  up  there.  But  the  noise  left  the  Gaffer's 
snore  unweakened.  Well,  at  any  rate  he  had  solved  her  problem 
— at  least  for  the  moment — she  thought  bitterly,  as  she  groped 
her  way  back  to  the  glimmering  grate.  But  even  the  chemical 
matches  would  not  light,  whether  by  friction  or  when  placed  on 


456  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  charred  log  :  evidently  the  long  damp  had  impaired  them, 
and  they  even  snapped  under  her  fingers.  How  lucky  it  was 
one  need  not  rely  on  such  new-fangled  gewgaws,  she  thought 
when — by  a  happy  inspiration — she  found  the  solid  steel  and 
stone  with  the  tinder-box  in  the  Gaffer's  pockets  ;  and  soon  the 
lamp  was  lit  and  the  fire  glowing  ruddily  under  the  bellows. 
Then  she  made  herself  some  kettle-broth  (hot  water  with  bread 
soaked  in  it),  which,  sipped  before  the  fire,  was  almost  as  cheering 
as  the  blazing  logs,  and  resisting  the  temptation  to  cook  one  of 
the  bloaters,  she  fed  the  still  subdued  Nip  from  the  bread. 

When  he  was  cosily  couched  in  his  basket,  and,  with  a  last  sum- 
moning of  her  spent  energies,  she  had  rubbed  down  Methusalem, 
she  tried  to  fold  her  third  charge,  but  the  old  man  still  snored 
steadily,  and  when  she  sought  again  to  raise  his  head  from  the  tray, 
he  swore  inarticulately  in  his  sleep,  and  she  was  too  worn  out  to 
persist  or  even  to  remove  the  tray  and  glasses.  She  wanted  to 
sleep  herself,  after  all  these  emotions  and  the  long  day  in  the 
air,  and  her  cracked  mirror  showed  her  a  drawn  face  that  yawned 
and  closed  weary  eyes  against  itself.  But  it  now  occurred  to 
her  that  she  could  not  get  to  bed  with  Gran'fer  in  the  room,  she 
must  sleep  in  an  arm-chair  or  on  the  settle,  or  stretched  on 
the  floor  with  the  cushion  for  pillow.  But  the  floor  through 
her  early  start  was  unswept,  the  settle  was  too  narrow,  and  the 
chair  soon  got  so  hard  that  after  a  last  attempt  to  rouse  the 
sleeper,  she  put  an  old  cloak  over  his  shoulders,  a  stout  log  on 
the  fire,  turned  out  the  lamp — setting  her  shadow  leaping  mon- 
strously— and  dragged  herself  up  the  dark,  fusty  staircase  to  his 
room,  where  she  let  herself  fall  dressed  on  his  bed.  She  did  not 
dare  get  between  the  sheets,  for  fear  he  might  wake  up  in  the 
night  and  come  up  to  bed.  Lying  there,  muttering  the  prayers 
she  was  too  tired  to  kneel  for,  she  had  an  underthought  that 
Providence  was  giving  her  a  hint :  assuredly  in  the  coming 
winter  nights  she  must  leave  him  in  the  room  that  was  warmed 
all  day  by  the  fire,  exchanging  bedrooms,  though  not  for  the 
reason  he  had  once  suggested — a  reason  that  made  her  last 
conscious  thought  a  shame-faced  memory.  But  her  next  thought 
was  one  of  pleasant  wonder — sunshine  splashing  the  white- 
washed sloping  walls  through  the  undrawn  blind  of  a  little 
lattice.  What  was  this  strange  spacious  room  ?  How  came  she 
there  in  her  clothes  ?  Then  memory  resurged,  and  feeling  she 
had  slept  dangerously  long,  she  sprang  up,  unhooked  the  case- 


WINTER^S  TALE  457 

ment,  and  drew  a  deep  breath  of  fresh  air,  as  she  gazed  on  this 
unfamiliar  morning  view  of  the  Common  and  the  hoar- frosted 
fields,  dazzling  her  eye  with  floating  colour-specks  from  the  sun 
that  cut  redly  through  the  foliage  of  a  fir-tree.  Particularly  she 
relished  the  silver  rim  of  the  Brad  now  descried  on  the  horizon. 
It  made  her  feel  sickish  to  descend  from  that  space  and  freshness 
to  the  dark,  airless,  shuttered  room  with  its  musty,  beery  smell 
and  its  all-pervading  snore.  Swiftly  she  threw  open  the  shutters 
and  the  casement,  and  let  the  light  and  air  stream  in. 

The  chill  draught  and  the  noise  she  made  seemed  to  rouse  the 
Gaffer  at  last,  for  as  she  was  returning  from  the  kitchen  wdth 
some  kindlings  for  the  iire  in  her  apron,  he  opened  his  eyes  with 
a  start  and  stared  at  her. 

"  Where's  Sidrach  ?  " 

She  was  taken  aback  :  she  had  not  yet  prepared  her  story. 
Indeed  the  waking  in  the  big  attic  and  the  puzzle  of  his  condition 
had  driven  her  own  problem  out  of  her  head. 

"  Sidrach  ?  "  she  murmured.  Should  she  out  with  his  death 
and  be  done  with  it  ? 

"  Ay,  he  got  riled  'cause  Oi  wouldn't  let  him  smoke.  Where's 
he  got  to  ?  " 

It  was  now  her  turn  to  stare  at  him.  "  Nonsense,  Gran'fer," 
she  said  gently,  "  that's  a  dream  you've  been  having." 

"  Mebbe."  He  blinked  in  the  sunlight,  mystified.  Suddenly 
his  face  darkened.  "  Why  do  ye  tell  me  lies  agen  ?  There's  his 
tumbler  !  " 

He  pointed  to  one  of  the  beery  glasses  she  had  left  still  stand- 
ing. Commonplace  as  the  glass  looked  with  its  lees,  she  was 
glad  he  had  not  pointed  at  it  the  evening  before  in  the  weird 
moonlight  with  her  brain  full  of  the  poor  dead  Dap. 

"  Don't  tell  me  !  "  she  said  in  a  voice  she  tried  in  vain  to  make 
stern.  "  It  wasn't  Sidrach  that  was  drinking  with  you.  Who 
was  it  ?  " 

"  It  was  Sidrach,  Oi'm  tellin'  ye,"  he  protested.  "  Oi  put  out 
his  beer  with  his  tumbler  and  his  chair  to  be  ready  soon  as  ye 
brought  him  back,  he  bein'  a  rare  one  for  his  liquor.  But  the 
hours  passed  slow  as  a  funeral  crawl,  it  got  owl-light  and  you 
not  back,  ne  yet  a  rumble  of  your  cart  upon  the  road,  so  at  last 
moUoncholy-like  Oi  lights  the  lamp  and  makes  a  roaring  fire 
and  drinks  by  myself,  and  then  Oi  locks  and  bolts  up  and 
stoops  down   to  put  on  another  log,  and  when  Oi  looks  up, 


458  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

there  he  sets  in  his  chair  in  his  best  Sunday  smock,  all  clean  and 
white." 

She  thrilled  again. 


"  But  how  could  he  get  in,  if  you'd  locked  up  ?  " 


"  That's  what  Oi  says  to  him.     '  Good  Lord,  Sidrach,'  Oi  says,  ] 

'  how  did  you  get  here  ? '     '  Come  in  the  coach  from  Che'msford,'  ;j 

says  he.     '  The  coach,'  says  Oi,  wexed, '  ye  didn't  want  to  back  up  j 

the  jackanips  what's  come  competitioning  here,  and  Jinny  gone  ^ 

to  fetch  ye,  too.     But  how  did  ye  get  through  the  door  I '  Oi  says.  ! 

'  You  draw  me  some  beer,  Danny,'  says  he.     '  For  Oi  count  ye've  ^ 

finished  the  jug.'     So  Oi  goos  to  the  kitchen  with  the  jug,  and  j 

there  sure  enough  stands  the  door  wide  open — happen  Oi  hadn't  ^ 

vshut  it  good  tightly — and  there  passin'  along  the  road  by  the  1 

Common  Oi  catches  sight  of  the  coach,  lookin'  all  black  in  the  ? 

dusk  and  glidin'  away  wery  quiet,  same  as  ashamed  to  be  in  I 

our  cart-racks.     *  You  pirate  thief,'  Oi  says,  shakin'  my  fist  at  J 

the  driA'^er,  'ye'll  never  come  into  this  house  save  on  your  hands  i 

and  knees.'     But  when  Oi  goos  back  with  my  jug  brimmin'  over,  ; 

Sidrach  warn't  there.    '  Sidrach  ! '  Oi  calls, '  Sidrach  ! '   No  answer.  ] 

Oi  goos  about  beat  out  and  crazy  'twixt  here  and  the  kitchen  | 

and  then  the  clock  strikes,  and  that  remembers  me  to  look  in  the  \ 

tother  room,  and  there  Oi  hears  him  chucklin'  to  hisself  in  one  j 

of  they  big  empty  boxes  ye  left  at  home  this  marnin'.     '  Out  ye  ;j 

come,'  says  Oi,  laughin'  too,  for  he  was  alius  up  to  his  pranks,  \ 

was  Sid.     '  And  Oi'm  proper  glad  to  see  you,  old  chap,'  Oi  says,  j 

With  that  he  comes  out  of  his  box,  with  a  little  o'  the  dust  on  i 

his  white   smock,  and  he  hugs  and  coases  me — ^wery  cowld  his  j 

hands  and  face  was  from  the  long  jarney — and  Oi  drinks  his  ] 

health  and  he  drinks  mine,  and  we  clinks  they  glasses  together  j 

and  has  rare  sport  gammickin'  of  the  times  when  Oi  was  in  my  ] 

twenties  and  he  taken  me  to  see  the  cock-fightin'  and  that  old    | 

Christmas  Day  his  dog  won  the  silver  spoon  in  the  bear -bai tin'  at   ] 

^  The  Black  Sheep,'  and  Oi  told  him  as  Annie  were  free  nowj  but   j 

seein'  as  he  was  come  to  stay,  Oi  dedn't  want  nobody  else  and  he  j 

needn't  be  afeared  he'd  be  tarned  out  ef  Oi  died,  bein'  as  Oi'd   ^ 

left  the  house  to  him  by  will  and  testament.     '  Little  Danny,'  says    ; 

he, '  you're  a  forthright  brother,  but  no  fear  o'  the  poorhouse  for    \ 

neither  on  us,  for  Oi  was  born  with  that  silver  spoon  in  my    \ 

mouth,  and  Oi've  got  a  stockin'  chock-full  o'  gold,'  and  he  shows    j 

me  it,  hunderds  of  spade  guineas,  each  with  the  head  of  Gearge  III,    \ 

fit  to  warm  the  cockles  of  your  heart,  and  we  clinked  glasses  agen    ] 


WINTER^S  TALE  459 

and  sang  three-times-three,  merry  as  grigs,  and  then  the  devil 
possesses  him  to  pull  out  his  pipe  and  baccar.  'No,  ye  don't,* 
says  Oi,  '  not  for  all  the  gold  in  Babylon,'  and  Oi  runs  to  pocket 
the  flint  and  steel  on  the  mantelpiece,  and  to  block  out  the  fire, 
and  he  laughs  and  howds  his  pipe  over  the  lamp  and  draws  like 
a  demon.  Oi  rushes  to  the  lamp  and  tarns  it  out  and  then  back 
to  the  fire,  but  aldoe  that  give  a  goodish  light,  Sidrach,  he  warn't 
there  no  more."     He  was  almost  blubbering. 

"  But  how  did  he  look  ?  "  said  Jiiiny,  whose  kindlings  had  long 
since  slid  from  her  apron. 

"  A  hansum  bonkka  man,  Oi  keep  tellin'  ye.  Ain't  ye  seen 
him  nowhere  ?  Where's  he  got  to  ?  Just  there  he  sat  singin' 
with  his  great  old  woice  : 

'  Two  bony  Frenchmen  and  one  Portugee, 
One  jolly  Englishman  can  lick  all  three?  " 

The  quavering  melody  ended  with  a  big  sneeze,  and  Jinny, 
fearing  the  brothers  would  indeed  be  reunited,  rushed  to  close 
the  window  and  light  the  fire.  Though  she  felt  confusedly  that 
her  grandfather,  waiting  for  Sidrach,  and  drinking  too  freely  in 
his  melancholy,  had  probably  dreamed  it  all,  she  was  not  sure 
that  he  had  not  really  seen  Sidrach's  ghost.  How  else  would 
the  flint  and  steel  have  got  into  his  pocket  ?  In  any  case  she 
was  reminded  that  her  secret  was  not  safe.  In  concealing  a 
death  one  forgot  to  reckon  with  the  ghost,  and  Sidrach's  might 
at  any  time  divulge  it  suddenly  to  his  brother,  even  if  the  present 
visitation  was  only  a  dream.  Dap's  ghost,  too,  was  another  pos- 
sibility that  must  be  taken  into  account.  "  I'll  tell  you  where 
Sidrach's  got  to,"  she  said  desperately,  as  a  yellow  flame  leapt  up, 
"  he's  got  to  heaven." 

"  To  heaven  ?  "  repeated  the  old  man  vaguely. 

"  To  heaven  !  "  she  said  inexorably.  "  He  hasn't  been  in 
Chelmsford  for  weeks.  He  was  very  old,  you  see,  a  hundred 
and  five." 

The  Gaffer  began  to  tremble,  "  Ye  don't  really  mean  Sidrach's 
gone  to  heaven  ?  " 

She  nodded  her  head  sadly.     "  He  fell  down,"  she  explained. 

"  Fell  down  to  heaven  ?  "  he  asked  dazedly. 

"  His  body  fell  downstairs — ^his  soul  went  up  to  God." 

"  Then  he  come  downstairs  agen  last  night,  dear  Sidrach,"  he 


46o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER  i 

said  solemnly ;  "  he  come  to  have  a  glass  and  a  gammick  with  hisi 
little  brother." 

Jinny  was  not  prepared  to  deny  it,  and  though  the  idea  jarred  J 
it  was  after  all  difficult  to  see  snoring  senectitude  with  the; 
poetry  attaching  to  Angel-Mothers.  She  removed  the  dirty  j 
glasses  silently.  j 

"And  where's  his  stockin'  o'  gold  ?"  he  inquired  suddenly. | 
"  Why  didn't  ye  bring  back  that  ?  "  \ 

"  There  wasn't  any,"  she  said  gently.     "  He  died  poorish."       \ 

"  They've  stole  it,"  he  cried.  "  They've  robbed  me.  'Twas] 
me  he  meant  it  for."  ! 

"  No,  no — all  he  left  was  used  up  in  the  funeral."  \ 

"  Ay,  they  ain't  satisfied  with  carts  nowadays,"  he  commented  ■ 
bitterly.  "  Like  that  doddy  little  Dap.  Did  you  goo  to  thej 
churchyard  to  see  the  grave  ?  "  ] 

"  Yes,"  she  replied  unflinchingly,  sustained  by  the  verbal^ 
accuracy.  "  I've  got  you  a  bloater  for  breakfast,"  she  added] 
cheerfully.  | 

"  That's  the  cowld  chill  he  caught  as  a  cad,  gatherin'  eggs  on] 
the  ma'shes,"  he  said  musingly.  "  Ague  they  calls  it— never  gotj 
over  it.  And  tramped  with  his  pack-horses  in  all  weathers.  And; 
rollin'  about  here  and  there  and  everywheres.  *  You'll  never] 
make  old  bones,  Sid,'  Oi  says  to  him."  \ 

"  A  hundred  and  five  is  pretty  old,  Gran'fer,"  Jinny  reminded^ 
him.  "  King  David  only  says  seventy,  that's  exactly  one  and  a| 
half  lives  your  brother  had."  \ 

"  Give  me  the  Book,"  he  said  brokenly.  I 

With  trembling  hands  she  brought  the  great  Family  Bible  he^ 
had  inherited  with  the  house.  But  his  object  seemed  to  be| 
neither  verification  of  the  text  nor  prayerful  reading,  for  hel 
next  asked  for  pen  and  ink,  and  then  having  ascertained  the! 
exact  date  of  Sidrach's  death,  he  adjusted  his  spectacles  and: 
chronicled  it  with  a  quavering  quill  opposite  Sidrach's  birth-i 
date.  \ 

"  He's  gone  to  heaven,"  he  said.  "  That's  more  than  somel 
folks'll  do — even  on  their  hands  and  knees.  Do  ye  warm  myj 
beer  for  me  this  marnin',  dearie,  for  Oi  fare  to  be  cowld  and. 
lonely  in  my  innards,  and  Oi'd  fain  smoke  a  pipe  myself,  same  as; 
Oi  hadn't  promised  the  old  man  o'  God."  j 


1 

WINTER'S  TALE                              461  j 

VI  j 

The  year  ended  gloomily  for  Jinny.     December  was  cold.     In  j 

the  mornings  the  fields  looked  almost  snowy  with  hoar-frost,  but  j 

the  actual  snow  did  not  come  till  near  Christmas.     Her  grand-  \ 

father  refused  to  be  moved  from  his  bedroom — one  was  safer  from  ^ 

thieves  up  there,  he  now  urged — so  a  fire  upstairs  every  evening  u 

was  added  to  her  work.     But  the  monotony  of  existence  and  of  ! 

the  struggle  therefor  was  broken  by  two  letters  and  an  episode,  ; 

albeit  all  interconnected.  ■ 

Both  letters  were  from  Toby,  the  naval  gunner.  Dap's  eldest  \ 

son,  and  the  one  for  her  grandfather  was  enclosed  in  hers,  as  \ 

Toby  was  not  sure  the  old  gentleman  was  still  alive,  one  of  his  | 

sisters  having  heard  that  there  was  a  piece  in  the  paper  about  ) 

his  death  at  the  age  of  a  hundred  and  five.     He  had  only  found  ! 

her  own  address  after  the  funeral,  he  wrote,  a  packet  of  letters  \ 

from  her  having  come  to  hand  in  the  clearing  up.     For  although  i 

his  poor  father  with  his  last  breath  had  asked  that  his  telescope  i 

be  given  to  little  Jinny  Boldero  as  a  token  of  love  and  remem-  \ 

brance,  he  had  died  without  telling  them  where  to  send  it.     It  \ 

would  now  be  forwarded  in  due  course.     For  two  months  he  \ 

had  borne  much  pain  with  Christian  resignation,  she  learnt  with  ^ 

'"sorrow  and  respect.     The  other  letter,  addressed  "  Mr.  Daniel  ; 

Quarles,"  she  had  no  option  but  to  hand  over,  but  did  so  with  \ 

anxiety,  for  she  had  not  yet  broken  the  news  of  Dap's  death,  and  | 

whether  he  received  it  with  regret  or  with  unchristian  satisfaction,  \ 

it  would  assuredly  agitate  him.     As  she  watched  him  open  it,  ] 

she  saw  a  piece  of  paper  flutter  from  it,  and  she  caught  it  in  , 

its  fall.  i 

"  That's  mine  !  "  he  cried,  snatching  it  from  her  fingers.     "  Pay  \ 

the  person  naimed "  he  read  out  dazedly.     "  What's  that  ?  "  ] 

"  That  must  be  a  money  order,"  she  explained,  though  with  1 

no  less  surprise.  \ 

"  A  money  order  ?  "  he  repeated.  j 

"  You've  seen  post-office  orders,  surely,"  she  said,  not  realizing  ^ 

that  they  had  only  become  common  a  decade  ago  with  the  j 

introduction  of  penny  postage,  and  that  nobody — not  even  his  i 

children — had  ever  sent  him  one  before.     "  'Tis  a  way  of  sending  j 

money — you  can  send  as  much  as  two  pounds  for  threepence,  j 

How  much  is  yours  for  ?  "  ' 

Overlaid  memories  of  his  late  eighties  struggled  to  the  surface.  I 


462  JINNY  THE  CARRIER  I 

"  Oh,  ay,"  he  said,  not  answering  her.     "  That  was  a  blow  for  j 

the  carriers — that  and  the  penny  post.     Folks  began  to  write  I 

to  the  shops  ;    dedn't  matter  so  much  here,  but  the  Che'msford  1 

carriers  complained  bitter  as  the  tradesmen  sent  out  their  own  i 

carts  with  the  goods."  j 

"  But  how  much  is  it  for  ?  "  repeated  Jinny  impatiently.  ' 

He  studied  it  afresh,  holding  it  away  from  her  like  a  dog  with  i 

its  paw  on  a  bone.     "  Three  pound !  "  he  announced  with  rapturous  j 

defiance.     "  Ye  took  away  my  f oiver.     But  this  be  for  the  person  j 

naimed  on  the  enwelope,  and  that's  Daniel  Quarles."  ■ 

"  But  what's  it  for  ?  "  she  asked.  j 

"  It's  for  me,"  he  said  conclusively,  and  was  going  up  to  his  ; 

room  like  a  magpie  with  its  treasure.  I 

"  Yes,  but  read  the  letter,"  she  urged.  I 

He  consented  to  sit  down  and  study  it.     "  Good  God  !  "  he  i 

blubbered  soon.     ''  Poor  Dap's  dead."  | 

"  Dead  ?  "  echoed  Jinny  mendaciously.  I 

"  You  read  it  for  yourself,  dearie.     An  awful  pity,  a  man  in  j 

the  prime  of  life.     'Tis  from  his  boy  in  the  Navy  as  he  ast  to  ; 

send  me  three  pounds  what  he  owed  me.     That  was  wunnerful  ; 

honest  of  him,  to  remember,  seein'  as  Oi  don't,  aldoe  Oi  count  the  ] 

Lord  put  it  into  his  heart,  knowin'  Oi  wanted  money  terrible  ^ 

bad.     But  Oi  alius  felt  he  was  a  good  chap  underneath  :  'twarn't  ; 

his  fault  he  had  a  glass  eye.     That  made  him  look  at  the  nose,   j 

like,  and  git  frownin'  and  quarrelsome.     Three  pound  !     That's  \ 

a  good  nest-egg."  ! 

"  Yes,"  said  Jinny,  glad  the  death  was  passing  off  so  peace-  ] 

fully,  "  and  he's  sending  me  his  telescope."  \ 

"  He  don't  say  that,"  he  said,  peering  at  the  letter  again.  j 

She  turned  red.     "  I  had  a  line  too— didn't  you  notice  yours   1 

had  no  stamp  ?     I'll  change  your  order  for  you  at  the  post  office,"    \ 

she  went  on  hurriedly.     Mentally  she  had  worked  out  that  two   ) 

of  the  pounds  represented  the  price  of  the  new  gravestone  the  j 

Commander  had  never  purchased,   and  the  third  his  idea   of  \ 

interest  for  all  these  years.     Doubtless  he  had  been  too  tactful  -^ 

to  send  them  back  in  his  lifetime.     Anyhow  she  agreed  with  her   | 

grandfather  that  it  was  really  all  the  Lord's  doing,  for  nothing   j 

could  be  timelier.     Even  her  poultry  was  now  being  steadily   1 

sacrificed,  and  this  great  sum  would  get  her  beautifully  over  I 

Christmas  and  New  Year  and  start  that  with  a  handsome  balance   \ 

in  hand.     But  she  had  counted  without  her  grandfather.  j 


WINTER^S  TALE  463 

"  No,  you  don't !  "  The  Gaffer's  hand  closed  grimly  on  the 
precious  paper.     "  That's  a  nest-egg,  Oi'm  tellin'  ye." 

"  But  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  it  ?  "  she  inquired  in 
distress. 

"  That's  for  Annie." 

"  Mr.  Skindle's  mother  !     But  he's  rich  as  rich." 

"  He  don't  never  buy  her  nawthen.  He  come  here  and  told 
me  sow  out  of  his  own  mouth,  the  hunks.  Oi  had  to  pay  for  her 
packet  o'  hairpins." 

"  Well,  anyhow  she'll  have  her  Christmas  dinner,  and  that's 
more  than  you're  sure  of,"  she  risked  threatening. 

"  You've  got  the  telescope,  hain't  ye  ?  "  he  urged  uneasily. 

*'  I  can't  sell  that.     That's  for  remembrance." 

"  Ye  can  remember  him  without  a  telescope.  And  ef  he  had 
his  faults,  'tain't  for  you  to  remember  'em,  seein'  as  ye'd  never 
a-bin  here  at  all  ef  he'd  done  his  duty  by  Emma  and  King  Gearge. 
But  Oi  reckon  he  couldn't  see  everythink  with  that  glass  eye, 
and  Oi  ought  to  ha'  carried  silks  and  brandy  myself  'stead  o' 
parcels  and  culch.  Did,  Oi'd  a-got  a  stockin'  like  Sidrach's  and 
not  had  to  deny  myself  bite  and  sup  for  your  sake."  And  he 
hobbled  stairwards,  the  post-office  order  clutched  in  his  skeleton 
claw.  "  Do  ye  write  to  Dap's  buoy-oy  and  thank  him  for  payin'  his 
dues,  and  say  as  Oi  hope  he  won't  put  no  fooleries  on  his  father's 
stone,  and  he'd  best  copy  what  Oi  had  put  on  your  father's  and 
mother's." 

Jinny  duly  wrote,  if  not  in  these  terms.  But  when  the  tele- 
scope came,  she  felt  anything  but  thankful.  For,  welcome  as 
it  was  in  itself,  it  came  by  the  coach.  She  had  been  too 
distraught  to  foresee  this,  though  she  recognized  that  it  was 
the  natural  way.  And  apart  from  the  sting  to  her  own  pride, 
it  agitated  her  grandfather  profoundly.  He  had  been  nod- 
ding at  the  hearth,  but  the  clamour  of  the  coach  aroused 
him,  and  ere  she  could  get  to  the  door  he  had  sprung  up  with 
an  oath. 

"  Don't  let  him  over  my  doorstep  !  "  he  cried,  pursuing  her. 
"  He's  got  to  come  in  on  his  hands  and  knees."  He  jostled  her 
aside  and  seized  the  bolt,  but  his  hand  trembled  so,  he  could  not 
shoot  it. 

"  How  can  he  crawl  in,  if  you  bolt  the  door  ? "  she  said  tact- 
fully. 

He  was  staggered  :   the  possibility  of  the  opposition  obstinacy 


464  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

relaxing  had  never  even  occurred  to  him.  Recovering,  he  urged 
that  the  enemy  would  try  to  rush  over  the  sill. 

"  No  fear,  Gran'fer.  He'll  never  cross  our  threshold  unless 
you  carry  him  in  1  " 

She  spoke  with  unconscious  admiration  of  Will's  tenacity. 
Indeed  the  image  of  the  young  man  crawling  to  her  grandfather 
or  even  to  herself  would  have  been  repellent,  had  it  been  really 
conceivable. 

"  Carry  him  in  !  "  the  Gaffer  laughed  explosively,  and  that 
burst  of  derision  made  him  almost  good-humoured.  He  let 
himself  be  pushed  gently  towards  the  inner  room,  while  Jinny, 
with  her  pulse  at  gallop,  opened  the  door. 

The  tension  and  friction  of  nerves  proved  sheer  waste.  The 
long  narrow  parcel  was  brought  to  the  door  by  the  hobbledehoy 
guard,  and  the  driver  remained,  imperturbably  important,  on  his 
box,  looking  almost  as  massive  as  an  old  stager  in  his  new,  caped 
greatcoat  and  coloured  muffler,  though  the  face  under  the  broad- 
brimmed  festively  sprigged  hat  was  very  different  from  the 
mottled  malt-soused  visages  of  the  coaching  breed.  It  seemed 
but  an  idle  glance  that  Jinny  cast  at  it,  or  at  the  Christmas 
congestion  of  the  coach,  overflowing  with  passengers  and  literal 
Christmas  boxes,  and  with  hares  pendent  even  from  the  driver's 
seat.  Nevertheless,  as  ever  when  they  met,  long  invisible 
messages  passed  between  Jinny  and  Will,  and  not  all  her  defiance 
could  disguise  her  humiliation  at  this  second  triumph  of  the 
coach,  coming  as  it  did  when  the  fortunes  of  the  cart  were  at 
their  blackest.  For  the  Gaffer  refused  sullenly  to  part  with  his 
piece  of  paper — she  did  not  even  know  where  he  had  hidden  it — 
and  with  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  too  poorly  to  forage  for  her,  she  was 
almost  tempted  to  apply  for  the  Christmas  doles  that  were  by 
ancient  bequest  more  abundant  at  Mr.  Fallow's  church  than  ap- 
plicants for  them.  But  her  instinct  of  "  uprightness  "  saved  her  : 
better  that  the  last  of  her  poultry  should  be  sacrificed  for  the 
sacred  repletions  of  the  season.  She  did  indeed  dally  with  the 
notion  of  keeping  Christmas  not  with,  but  from,  her  grandfather 
— possibly  his  failing  memory  might  for  once  prove  an  advantage 
— but  she  had  a  feeling  that  apart  from  the  profanity  of  ignoring 
it,  the  festival  was  too  ingrained  in  the  natural  order  to  be  over- 
looked, for  did  not  Christmas  mark  the  pause  in  the  year,  when 
with  the  crops  in  the  ground  and  the  little  wheat-blades  safely 
tucked  under  the  snow,  and  the  beer  brewed  and  the  pigs  killed 


WINTER'S  TALE  465  ] 

and  salted,  the  whole  world  rests  and  draws  happy  frosted  \ 
breath  ?  No,  the  old  man's  instinct  would  surely  trip  her  up,  if  ■ 
she  tried  to  run  Christmas  as  an  ordinary  day.  \ 

She  might,  of  course,  as  he  had  originally  suggested,  sell  or  i 
at  least  pawn  her  telescope,  but  even  if  she  could  have  brought  ; 
herself  to  that,  she  could  not  have  got  it  away  from  him,  for  he  i 
had  annexed  it  from  the  first  moment  and  sat  peering  out  of  it  ■ 
from  the  vantage-point  of  his  bedroom  lattice.  He  was  at  his  \ 
spy-glass  the  moment  he  woke,  enchanted  when  he  could  descry  \ 
people  or  incidents  far-off — it  was  as  if  his  long  seclusion  from  ; 
the  outer  world  was  over — and  he  would  call  out  like  a  child  ; 
and  tell  Jinny  what  he  had  seen.  Sometimes  it  was  Master  i 
Peartree  and  his  dog,  sometimes  Bidlake  ferrying  on  the  Brad  or  \ 
a  couple  seeking  warmth  in  a  cold  lane ;  now  a  woodman  cutting  ] 
holly  branches  with  his  billhook,  anon  Bundock  bowled  by  his  \ 
bag  or  Mott  with  his  fishing-rod,  and  once  he  cried  out  he  could  \ 
see  Annie  coming  out  of  Beacon  Chimneys,  though  Jinny  sus-  j 
pected  that  the  tall  figure  with  the  "  wunnerful  fine  buzzom. "  \ 
was  really  Farmer  Gale's  new  wife.  Particularly  protected  did  \ 
her  grandfather  now  feel  against  thieves,  whose  stealthy  advent  i 
he  would  henceforward  detect  from  afar.  Delighted  as  she  was  j 
in  her  turn  with  the  new  toy  that  kept  him  happy  even  on  a  ] 
reduced  diet,  she  had  to  keep  his  fire  going  all  day  now,  and  to  \ 
be  up  and  down  closing  the  window  through  which  he  would  \ 
stick  the  telescope.  Sometimes  he  directed  his  tube  heaven-  1 
ward,  though  not  for  astronomical  purposes.  "  Happen  Oi'll  see  ] 
Sidrach  coming  down  for  a  gossip,"  he  said.  ■ 

Just  before  Christmas  he  informed  her  he  had  decided  that  the  i 
right  thing  to  do  with  the  nest-egg  was  to  purchase  Sidrach  a  ■ 
gravestone  with  it,  and  he  instructed  her  to  write  a  letter  of  \ 
inquiry  to  Babylon.  But  although  this  seemed  to  her  a  more  J 
logical  use  of  it  than  he  knew,  she  disregarded  his  instruction.  ] 
The  nest-egg  was  too  precious.  The  time  might  come  when  he  j 
would  ask  for  bread,  and  was  she  to  give  him  a  sLone  ?  1 


vn 

Neglected  on  the  coast  in  favour  of  New  Year,  Christmas  was 
celebrated  in  the  inland  valley  of  the  Brad  with  the  conventional 
accessories,  and  every  Christmas  the  mummers  had  been  wont 
to  attend  on  the  Master  of  Blackwater  Hall ;  as  well  as  the  waits. 

2  G 


466  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Jinny  with  no  coin  to  offer  to  either,  the  last  of  her  poultry  doomed 
for  the  Christmas  dinner,  and  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  also  on  her 
hands,  had  this  year  to  beg  both  companies  to  refrain,  alleging 
her  grandfather  was  too  ill.  The  weather  was  seasonable,  the 
robin  hopped  as  picturesquely  on  the  snow  as  on  the  Christmas 
card  Jinny  had  enclosed  with  her  thanksgiving  letter  to  Gunner 
Dap.  The  cottage,  prankt  with,  its  holly  and  mistletoe,  had  a 
fairylike  air — everything  was  perfect,  even  to  the  Christmas 
pudding.  But  only  Nip  and  Methusalem  were  happy.  To  the 
Gaffer  the  breach  of  an  immemorial  tradition  gave  a  troubling 
sense  of  void. 

"  Where's  the  waits  ?  Where's  Father  Chris'miis  ?  Where's 
St.  Gearge  ?  "  he  kept  saying  peevishly.  Jinny  put  him  off  with 
vague  replies  or  none.  Once  he  alarmed  her  by  asking  suddenly  : 
"  Where's  the  Doctor  ?  "  She  was  reassured  when  he  began 
spouting  : 

"  Oi  carry  a  bottle  of  alicampaner 

He  passed  on  to  imagine  himself  as  St.  George,  and  seizing  the 
poker  for  a  sword  declaimed  vigorously,  if  imperfectly  : 

"  OiHl  fight  the  Russian  Bear,  he  shall  not  fly, 
OVll  cut  him  down  or  else  OVll  dieP 

*'  Ain't  we  a-gooin'  to  see  the  mummers  ?  "  he  inquired  angrily 
as  Christmas  Day  waned. 

"  Perhaps  they  are  ill  or  it's  too  cold,"  she  suggested  feebly. 

"  But  they're  gooin'  around  to  other  folk  !  "  he  protested. 
"  Oi  seen  'em  through  my  glass  !  " 

"  Well,  then  you  have  seen  them,"  she  said  still  more  feebly. 
Inwardly  she  wondered  if  he  had  detected  herself,  on  her  way 
to  church,  carrying  off  some  Christmas  dinner  to  Uncle  Lilli- 
whyte's  hut.     The  telescope  was  a  new  terror  added  to  life. 

She  had  wanted  to  invite  the  prop  of  her  larder  to  take  his 
Christmas  dinner  with  them,  but  her  grandfather  refused  violently 
to  sit  down  with  such  a  "  ragamuffin."  His  sense  of  caste  was 
acute,  and  as  Jinny's  sense  of  smell  was  equally  acute,  she  would 
not  have  persisted,  even  had  renewed  rheumatism  not  confined 
the  ancient  to  his  hut. 

The  day  after  Christmas  that  year  was  Friday,  and  after  the 
comparative  festivity  of  the  holiday  it  required  no  small  force 


WINTER'S  TALE                               467  ] 

of  will  to  go  round  uselessly  in  the  north  wind,  when  one  day  a  j 

week  would  have  more  than  sufficed  for  such  odd  commissions  ; 

as  still  came  her  way.     The  snow  had  fallen  thicker  in  the  night,  \ 

and  robins,  starlings,  finches,  blackbirds,  little  blue-tits  (pick-  * 

cheeses  she  called  them),  and  other  breakfastless  birds  had  ail  l 

been  tapping  at  her  window  for  crumbs.     But  the  remains  of  '{ 

the  feast  made  a  good  meal  for  her  grandfather  and  he  was  in  | 

the  best  of  humours,  praising  the  acting  of  the  mummers,  which  j 

he  did  not  now  remember  he  had  not  seen  this  Christmas,  and  \ 

remarking  upon  the  "  wunnerful  fine  woice  "   of  old  Ravens'  \ 

grandson  among  the  waits.     Apparently  his  memories  of  other  ; 

years  had  fused  together  into  an  illusion  concerning  the  day  ; 

before.      As  Jinny  set  out,  she  found  herself  wishing  he  would  * 

forget  his  quarrel  with  Will.     Not,   of  course,  that  she  could  i 

forget  hers !  ? 

There  were  grey  snow-clouds  in  the  sky,  and  as  she  ploughed  ] 

past  the  sheepfolds,  scarring  the  purity  of  the  road  with  her  } 

cart-tracks,  she  beheld  patriarchal  sheep,  standing  almost  silent  I 

with  round,  snow-white  beards  :   only  a  green  shoot  peeped  here  j 

and    there   from    the   speckless    white    expanse.     Methusalem's  ] 

muffled  footsteps  gave  her  a  sense  of  dream,  and,  when  the  wind  ) 

was  not  in  her  face,  she  watched  her  breath  rising  white  in  the  | 

air  with  some  strange  sense  of  exhaling  her  soul.     But  beneath  1 

this  mystic  daze  went  an  undercurrent  of  wonder  as  to  how  she  > 

could  meet  the  New  Year.  \ 

Returned  from  her  round — and  she  was  glad,  having  shown  \ 

herself  and  got  her  meal,  to  creep  home  under  cover  of  the  early  ! 

darkness — she  half  expected  to  find  the  Gaffer  as  ill  as  she  had  j 

feigned,  but  though  he  was  still  peering  out  into  the  night,  there  \ 

was  no  sign  he  was  in  the  grip  of  the  cold ;  on  the  contrary  he  i 

seemed  to  have  found  fresh  strength  and  brightness,  whether  from  j 

the  nest-egg  or  this  renewed  ocular  intercourse  with  his  world,  i 

"  Oi  seen  you  all  along  the  road,"  he  chuckled.      In  tliis  new  i 

mood  she  was  easily  able  to  persuade  him  to  exchange  a  goat  <. 

for  Methusalem's  provender.     He  would  not  part  with  his  three  I 

pounds,  but  they  gave  him  a  sense  of  security,  almost  of  gaiety,  j 

Indeed  their  existence  made  as  wonderful  a  difference  to  herself  J 

as  to  him.     Hidden  away  though  the  money  order  was,  she  felt  | 

the  old  man  would  be  forced  to  produce  it  if  ever  hunger  got  too  \ 

keen,  and  so  the  knowledge  of  it  sustained  her  as  the  proximity  > 

of  a  boat  sustains  a  swimmer.     It  was  scarcely  a  paradox  that  • 


468  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

without    its    assistance    she    could    not  have  got  through  the    j 

first  month  of  the  New  Year.     For  January  brought  the  "  hard   1 

winter "    foretold   by   the   sloes.     Outwardly   it   was   a    bright   \ 

world  enough,  with  children  skating  on  the  ponds  and  ditches  :  J 

indeed  the  frost  brought  out  a  veritable  flamboyance  of  colour    • 

in  the  animal  creation,  and  at  one  of  her  moments  of  despair   } 

when  she  had  humbled  herself  in  vain  to  offer  lace  to  the  new   j 

Mrs.  Gale,  Jinny  was  redeemed  by  the  motley  pomp  of  the  cocks  i 

shining  on  the  farmyard  straw,  and  the  glowing  hues  of  the  j 

calves  that  bestrode  it  with  them,  all  overbrooded  by  the  ancient  I 

mellow  thatch.     Her  heart  sang  again  with  the  row  of  chaffinches  j 

perched   on   the   white   stone   wall,    and   looking   at    the   trees  i 

silhouetted  so  gracefully  against  the  sky,  she  decided  that  winter  ^ 

bareness  was  almost  more  beautiful  than  summer  opulence.  ] 

But  she  changed  her  mind  when  she  watched — with  a  new  sym-  \ 

pathy  born  of  fellow-anxiety — the  struggle  for  food  among  the  I 

birds.     Coots  had  flocked  in  from  the  coast  to  add  to  the  competi-  | 

tion  of  land-species,  and  frozen  little  forms  or  bloody  half-feathered  \ 

fragments,  but  especially  dead  starlings  with  lovely  shades  of  j 

green  and  purple,  pathetically  imponderable  when  picked  up,  all  i 

skin  and  feather — sometimes  decapitated   by  sparrow-hawks —  « 

abounded  on  the  hard  white  roads.     As  she  began  to  feel  the  J 

same  grim  menace  brooding  over  her  grandfather  and  herself,  i 

that  social  unrest  which  reached  even  Bradmarsh  in  faint  vibra-  ] 

tions  began  to  take  possession  of  her,  and  she  arrived  at  a  revolu-  ] 

tionary  notion  which  would  have  horrified  Farmer  Gale  far  more  j 

than  her  outrageous  demand  for    a   law   that  nobody    should] 

be  paid  less  than  ten  shillings  a  week.     She  actually  maintained  j 

that  every  man  should  be  pensioned  off  by  the  parish  on  reaching ; 

the  age  of  ninety  !     But  the  view  found  no  sympathy  in  an  age  j 

of    individualism,  to    which    the    poorhouse    was    the    supreme; 

humiliation.     Even  Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  who  was  now  on  the  mend^ 

again — though  too  weak  to  fend  for  anybody  but  himself — toldj 

her  to  her  surprise  that  every  man  ought  to  put  by  for  a  rainy  j 

day.     It  was  this  slavish  sluggishness  of  the  poor  that  was  the; 

real  stumbling-block  to  reform,  she  thought,  though  remembering^ 

Uncle  Lilliwhyte' s  leaky  habitation,  she  treasured  up  his  reply  asj 

a  humorous  example  of  the  gap  between  precept  and  practice,     j 

Even   more  unsympathetic   was  Mrs.   Mott's   attitude.     She] 

scoffed  at  the  idea  that  every  man  should  be  pensioned  off  at! 

ninety.     "  Poisoned  off  at  twenty,"  was  her  emendation.  \ 


WINTER^S  TALE  469 

"  Well,  you  do  your  best,"  Jinny  laughed. 

Mrs.  Mott's  blue  silk  bodice  crackled.     "  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Don't  you  sell  them  liquor  ?  " 

"  It's  good  liquor,"  said  Mrs.  Mott,  flushing. 

"  I  was  only  joking.  But  joking  apart,  it  doesn't  do  them 
much  good."  And  Jinny  thought  of  how  even  her  grandfather 
had  fuddled  himself,  with  or  without  ghostly  assistance. 

"  If  I  gave  up  my  bar,"  said  Mrs.  Mott  hotly,  "  who  would  pay 
the  rent  of  our  chapel  ?  " 

"  Well,  but  the  chapel  got  along  before  you  joined,"  Jinny 
reminded  her  mildly. 

"  Heaping  up  debt  !  "  shrilled  Mrs.  Mott,  with  flashing  eyes. 

"  Then  what's  the  good  of  poisoning  off  the  men  ?  "  argued 
Jinny,  smiling.     "  Where  would  your  bar  be  without  them  ?  " 

"  Women  could  learn  to  drink,"  said  Mrs.  Mott  fiercely,  *'  and 
smoke  too." 

But  the  latter  accomplishment  seemed  so  comically  impossible 
to  Jinny — who  had  never  seen  Polly  over  her  cigar  and  milk — 
that  she  burst  out  laughing  at  the  image  of  it,  and  her  laughter 
made  Mrs.  Mott  fiercer,  and  that  lady  said  for  two  pins  she'd 
wear  pink  pantaloons  like  the  Bloomerites.  As  Jinny  did  not 
offer  the  pins,  but  laughed  even  more  merrily  at  the  new  picture 
presented  to  her  imagination,  relations  with  Mrs.  Mott  became 
strained,  and  when  at  their  next  meeting  Jinny  sensibly  remarked 
that  if  the  law  really  gave  Mr.  Mott  his  wife's  possessions,  it  was 
useless  going  to  it,  all  that  lady's  indomitable  spirit  turned 
against  her  whilom  confidante.  "  You  take  his  part  like  every- 
body else,"  she  cried  bitterly.  "  But  don't  think  I  haven't  seen 
him  ogling  you  !  " 

"  Do  you  mean  I've  ogled  him  ?  "  said  Jinny,  incensed. 

"  I  don't  say  that,  but  you  can't  dislike  his  admiration — why 
else  are  you  on  his  side  ?  " 

"  I  am  not  on  his  side — I  detest  him." 

Mrs.  Mott  flew  off  at  a  tangent.  "  Then  you  ought  to  be 
grateful  to  me  for  protecting  you  against  him." 

Jinny  was  now  as  indignant  as  her  hostess.  "  How  have  you 
protected  me  ?  " 

"  Haven't  I  kept  you  always  out  of  his  way  ?  " 

"  Oh,  is  that  whv  you've  had  me  in  the  kitchen  ?  " 

"  Of  course." 

Jinny  felt  at  once  chilled  and  inflamed.     '*  It's  not  true,"  she 


470  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

cried  recklessly.  "  When  I  first  came  to  the  kitchen,  Mr.  Mott 
was  still  in  love  with  you,  and  I  only  went  there  because  you 
didn't  like  to  show  yourself." 

Such  reminders  are  unforgivable,  and  Jinny  would  probably 
never  again  have  enjoyed  Mrs.  Mott's  hospitality,  even  had  she 
not  then  and  there  shaken  it  off.  It  was  only  with  an  effort  she 
could  prevent  herself  declaring  that  Mrs.  Mott  would  have  to 
carry  her  into  the  kitchen  before  she  entered  it  again.  But  when 
she  got  out  in  the  cold  air,  she  felt  suddenly  as  foolish  as  Will 
and  her  grandfather  had  been.  With  starvation  bearing  down 
on  Blackwater  Hall  like  some  grim  iceberg,  the  loss  of  two 
full  meals  a  week  was  a  disaster.  She  was  not  even  sure  that 
the  courtyard  as  well  as  the  kitchen  would  not  be  closed  to  her, 
for  Mrs.  Mott  seemed  a  woman  without  measure,  whether  in  her 
religion,  her  affections,  her  politics,  or  her  quarrels.  Possibly, 
however,  the  poor  lady  overlooked  her  use  of  it,  for  the  cart 
continued  to  draw  up  there  with  its  air  of  immemorial  and 
invincible  custom.  But  if  Jinny  thus  still  kept  up  appearances, 
it  was  with  a  heart  that  grew  daily  heavier. 

In  looking  back  on  this  grim  period.  Jinny  always  regarded 
the  crawling  up  of  the  wounded  hedgehog  as  marking  the  zero- 
point  in  her  fortunes.  It  was  actually  crawling  over  her  door- 
step like  Will  in  her  grandfather's  imagination.  What  enemy 
had  bitten  off  its  neck-bristles  she  never  knew — she  could  only 
hope  it  was  not  Nip — but  catching  sight  of  the  dark,  ugly  gash, 
she  hastened  to  get  a  clean  rag  as  well  as  some  crumbs  and  goat- 
milk.  The  poor  creature  allowed  the  wound  to  be  dressed,  and 
seemed  to  nose  among  the  crumbs,  but  it  neither  ate  nor  drank. 
She  packed  it  in  straw  in  a  little  box  and  placed  it  in  a  warm 
corner  of  the  kitchen,  instructing  Nip  sternly  that  it  was  tabu. 

"  Caught  a  pig  ?  "  said  the  Gaffer  with  satisfaction,  stumbhng 
into  the  middle  of  this  lesson  in  the  higher  ethics.  "  That's  a 
wunnerful  piece  o'  luck,  a  change  from  rabbits,  too." 

"  You  wouldn't  eat  it  ?  "  she  cried  in  horror. 

"  Why,  what  else  ?  "  he  asked  in  surprise. 

"  There's  bread  and  there's  jelly,"  she  said,  misunderstanding, 
"  and  perhaps  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  will  be  round  with  something — 
he's  about  again." 

"  There  ain't  nawthen  better  than  hedgehog,"  the  Gaffer  said 
decisively.  "  And  'tis  years  since  Oi  tasted  one.  Sidrach  doted 
on  'em  roasted,  used  to  catch  'em  in  the  ditch-brambles." 


WINTER'S  TALE  471 

"  But  we've  got  to  cure  this,  not  kill  it,"  she  protested. 

'•  Ye  don't  cure  pigs  that  size,"  he  laughed  happily. 

For  once  Jinny  failed  to  appreciate  a  joke.  "  It  threw  itself 
on  our  protection,"  she  insisted.  "  We  can't  take  advantage  of 
it  like  that.     Besides,  it's  been  bitten  and  might  be  unhealthy." 

But  he  was  contumacious,  and  it  was  only  on  her  undertaking 
to  get  him  a  chicken  for  his  dinner  that  he  consented  to  forgo  the 
dainty  in  hand. 

To  acquire  this  in  the  absence  of  coin  involved  the  barter  of 
the  remaining  goats  in  a  large  and  complex  transaction  with  Miss 
Gentry's  landlady,  and  although  this  set  Jinny  and  Methusalem 
up  for  weeks,  yet  since  it  meant  the  exhaustion  of  her  last  reserves, 
the  wounded  hedgehog  became  to  happier  memory  a  sort  of 
symbol  of  desperation.  True,  there  were  still  the  telescope  and 
the  money  order,  but  one  could  not  easily  lay  one's  hand  on 
them — they  bristled  even  more  fiercely  than  the  poor  hedgehog. 

All  Jinny's  care  of  that  confiding  beast  proved  wasted.  In 
vain  she  renewed  the  dressing  on  its  neck,  in  vain  Nip  and  her 
grandfather  were  kept  off.  The  third  morning  it  was  found  on 
its  back,  more  helpless  than  Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  with  its  hind  paws 
close  together  but  its  front  paws  held  up  apart,  as  though  crying 
for  mercy.  Its  nose  and  paws  came  up  dark  brown  on  the 
lighter  spines  around,  the  eyes  were  closed  and  almost  invisible, 
buried  like  the  ears  amid  the  bristles.  The  rag  still  adorned 
its  neck. 

Jinny  gave  her  poor  little  patient  a  decent  burial  and  a  few 
tears.  "  'Tain't  no  use  cryin'  over  spilt  milk,"  the  Gaffer 
taunted  her.  "  Ye've  gone  and  wasted  good  food,  and  Oi  count 
the  Lord'll  think  twice  afore  He  sends  ye  a  present  agen." 

The  Gaffer  was  mistaken.  Little  Bradmarsh  was  about  to 
flow,  if  not  with  milk  and  honey,  with  hares  and  rabbits  and 
horses  and  sheep  and  haystacks  and  potatoes  and  mangolds  and 
even  chairs,  step-ladders,  fences,  gates,  watering-pots,  casks, 
boxes,  hurdles,  hen-coops,  and  wheelbarrows.  For  after  January 
had  ended  in  a  crescendo  of  rain,  wind,  sleet  and  tlie  heaviest 
snowfall  in  his  memory,  came  a  diminuendo  movement  of  sleet, 
thaw,  and  rain,  though  the  wind  raged  unabated,  and  after  that — 
the  Deluge  ! 


CHAPTER  XII 

WRITTEN  IN  WATER 

Fof^  in  a  nighty  the  best  part  of  my  power  ,  .  . 
Were  in  the  washes^  all  unwarily ^ 
Devoured  by  the  unexpected  flood, 

Shakespeare,  *'  King  John." 

I 

The  floods  of  '52  are  still  remembered  in  East  Anglia.  The 
worst  and  most  widespread  were  in  November,  but  "  February 
Fill-Dyke"  brought  the  more  localized  catastrophe  in  Little 
Bradmarsh.  The  village,  lying  as  it  did  along  the  left  bank  of 
the  Brad,  was  caught  between  two  waters,  the  overflow  of  the 
streams  to  the  north  that  ran  down  silt-laden  towards  this  bank, 
and  the  backwash  over  the  bank  from  the  Brad  itself,  which, 
already  swollen  by  rain,  and  by  the  waters  pumped  into  it  from 
the  marsh-mills  on  its  right  bank,  was  prevented  overflowing 
southwards  by  the  dyke  that  further  protected  Long  Bradmarsh. 
It  was  Nip  that  brought  Jinny  the  news,  though  she  did  not 
understand  its  purport  till  the  service  was  over.  For  it  was  to 
church  that  he  brought  it.  That  ancient  building,  standing 
isolated  on  its  green  knoll  flaked  with  gravestones,  had  begun  to 
appeal  to  him  as  much  as  to  Jinny,  and  despite  her  efforts  to 
dodge  or  shake  him  off,  he  had  become  a  regular  churchgoer. 
Nobody  seemed  to  mind  his  sitting  in  her  pew  or  squatting  by 
the  stove  :  perhaps  so  exiguous  a  congregation  could  not  be 
exigent,  and  in  that  aching  void  even  a  canine  congregant  was 
not  unwelcome.  But  his  mistress,  despite  the  sense  she  shared 
with  Mr.  Fallow  of  divine  glimmerings  in  the  animal  creation, 
had  always  an  uneasy  feeling  of  indecorum,  especially  when  Nip 
snored  through  the  sermon  like  a  Christian,  and  she  was  con- 
gratulating herself  that  the  "  Fifthly  and  Finally  "  had  been 
safely  reached  without  him,  when  in  he  trotted — far  wetter  and 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  473 

muddier  than  on  the  day  he  had  plumped  on  Will's  knees  in  the 
chapel.  The  sight  of  him  dripping  steadily  along  the  aisle 
towards  the  stove  did  not  interrupt  the  hymn  :  the  worshippers, 
though  the  morning  had  begun  with  a  set-back  to  snow,  were  in 
no  wise  surprised  by  a  return  to  rain.  Only  that  Saturday 
night  it  had  rained  *'  cats  and  dogs  "  :  one  dripping  dog  was 
therefore  no  alarming  phenomenon.  They  did  not  realize  that 
Nip  had  largely  swum  to  church. 

But  when,  at  the  church-door,  they  began  to  fumble  with  their 
umbrellas,  they  saw  with  wide  eyes  of  astonishment  and  dismay 
that  though  a  mere  sleety  drizzle  misted  the  air,  below  the  lych- 
gate  a  strange  expanse  of  waters  awaited  their  feet.  Except 
for  one  broad  finger  of  land  pointing  along  the  centre  of  a  vast 
yellow  lake,  their  world  was  suddenly  turned  to  water,  and 
Jinny  had  a  weird  wonder  as  to  what  the  dead  would  think 
could  they  rise  and  see  the  transformation  wrought  in  the  earthy 
spot  where  they  had  laid  themselves  so  securely  to  sleep. 

But  the  first  impression  of  plumbless  depth  was  contradicted 
by  the  hedgerows  standing  up — despite  their  reflections — much 
as  before,  still  with  a  light  powder  of  the  morning's  snow,  and 
when  Jinny  advancing  to  the  gate,  amid  a  chaos  of  ejaculatory 
comment  that  would  have  done  credit  to  a  full-sized  congregation, 
probed  the  lake  with  the  point  of  her  umbrella,  she  exhibited 
barely  three  inches  of  moist  tip.  Reassured  except  for  Sunday 
shoes,  the  bulk  of  the  worshippers  plashed  forwards  more  or  less 
boldly.  But  Miss  Gentry  refused  to  be  comforted  :  she  was 
already  half  hysterical  and  clutching  at  Jinny,  for  she  recalled 
her  anciently  prophesied  doom  of  drowning.  What  was  the  use 
of  a  lifelong  refusal  to  set  foot  on  the  water  ?  The  water  was 
come  to  her,  as  the  Clown  opined  of  Ophelia.  Jinny  coijd  quiet 
her  only  by  promising  to  see  her  safely  to  her  door.  With  a 
jump  the  girl  reached  the  four  steps  by  which  the  ladies  anciently 
mounted  to  their  pillions,  and  running  up,  she  surveyed  the  vista 
of  waters,  amid  which  the  three  pollarded  lime-trees  before  Miss 
Gentry's  cottage  rose  like  a  landmark.  She  could  now  make  a 
mental  map  of  the  driest  route.  For  from  this  observation-post, 
though  she  had  a  sodden  sense  of  mist  and  rain  and  blowiness, 
the  sense  of  an  unbroken  aqueous  expanse  disappeared.  She 
could  see  water,  water,  but  not  everywhere,  nor  were  even  the 
watery  parts  submerged  uniformly.  It  was  like  some  infallible 
illustration  of  the  ups  and  downs  of  Little  Bradmarsh.     Never 


474  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

before,  not  even  under  the  varying  strains  of  Methusalem,  had 
she  realized  how  undulating  the  village  was  for  all  its  apparent 
flatness.  She  saw  now  how  much  a  few  feet  counted,  and  how 
the  majority  of  the  cottages  and  the  farmhouses — all  the  ancient 
ones  indeed — had  planted  themselves  along  that  dry  finger: 
"  the  Ridge  "  they  called  it,  she  remembered,  though  the  name 
had  hitherto  been  a  mere  sound  to  her  ear,  for  so  gradual  was  its 
slope  that  she  had  never  felt  the  ascent  nor  put  on  the  brake  in 
descending.  But  to  see  it  culminating  in  the  Common  and  her 
own  dear  Blackwater  Hall  was  now  a  cheering  spectacle.  While 
a  white-flecked,  wind-whipped  waste  of  yellow  water  was  spread- 
ing where  yesterday  blackened  pastures  had  stretched,  here  were 
brown  fields  quite  untouched  by  the  flood-water,  with  their 
furrows  chalked  out  in  snow.  One  field  all  winter  white,  with 
thin  blades  just  peeping  up,  looked  friendly  rather  than  forlorn- 
such  was  the  effect  of  contrast.  Lower  down  the  Ridge  were 
stretches  covered  with  a  deposit  of  silt  and  leaf-mould,  with 
plough-handles  sticking  up,  and  between  these  and  the  flooded 
regions  was  a  half-and-half  world  that  reminded  Jinny  of  the 
salt-marshes  :  a  maze  of  pools  and  pondlets  and  water-patterns 
in  a  greenish  slime  mottled  with  hillocks. 

Taking  off  her  precious  shoes  and  stockings.  Jinny  descended 
from  her  observation-post  and  plunged  the  "  little  fitten " 
admired  of  her  grandfather  into  the  chilling  muddy  lake,  which 
seemed  to  have  risen  since  she  gauged  it.  Miss  Gentry,  clenching 
her  teeth,  followed  her  example,  but  in  the  effort  to  grasp  at 
once  her  skirt,  shoes,  and  muff  (with  prayer-book  couchant),  and 
to  prevent  her  umbrella  from  soaring  off  on  adventures  of  its 
own,  she  made  more  twitter  than  progress,  and  when,  at  their 
first  stile,  Nip,  plunging  through  the  bars,  dived  into  the  field 
and  swam  boldly  forward,  Miss  Gentry  with  a  shriek  perched 
herself  on  the  stile  and  refused  to  come  down.  Jinny,  baring 
her  legs  still  higher,  strove  to  laugh  away  her  patron's  fears,  but 
her  very  precaution  of  tucking  up  had  driven  the  dressmaker  into 
a  new  frenzy. 

"  There's  no  risk  so  long  as  we  dodge  the  ditches,"  Jinny 
pointed  out,  "  and  you  can  see  those  by  the  hedges.  And  look 
up  there — there's  your  lime-trees  signalling  their  feet  are  dry." 

"  Yes,  but  I  can't  get  to  them.  Oh,  Jinny,  go  and  fetch  me 
your  cart.     Do  be  a  love." 

"  Sunday  ?  " 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  475 

'*  It's  a  question  of  life  and  death." 

"  Very  well,"  Jinny  pretended.  "  If  I  cut  through  that  field 
with  the  cows  I  shan't  be  long,"  she  said  with  cunning  carelessness. 
But  she  had  not  gone  many  yards  ere,  as  she  expected,  she 
heard  Miss  Gentry  plashing  desperately  behind  her  with  cries  of 
"  Wait  for  me,  Jinny  !  Wait  !  ".  Miss  Gentry  did  not  reflect 
that  the  cows  would  not  be  out  in  that  weather ;  to  face 
those  fearsome  inches  under  escort  was  a  lesser  evil  than  the 
possible  dangers  from  panic-stricken  cattle  that  now  rose  before 
her  mind,  and  with  one  horn  of  the  dilemma  a  bull's,  her  choice 
was  precipitated. 

At  the  Four  Wantz  Way  new  terrors  arose  for  the  poor  lady. 
It  was  not  from  the  swirl  of  waters  that  met  there,  for  her  road 
now  stretched  visibly  upwards,  but  from  the  fact  that  the 
Pennymoles  were  occupied  in  moving  their  treasures  to  "  the 
high  room.'^  The  genial  paterfamilias  darting  to  his  doorstep — 
with  the  kerchiefed  owl  he  was  rescuing  in  his  hand — had  his  own 
flood  of  authoritative  lore  to  pour  out,  but  he  could  make  no 
headway  till  Miss  Gentry  had  blushingly  apologized  for  her  bare 
feet,  and  been  assured  that  no  respectable  man  would  look  at 
them.  Then,  though  his  hearers  stood  splashed  and  blown 
about,  he  held  even  Jinny  spellbound  with  a  description  of  Long 
Bradmarsh  as  he  had  known  it  in  his  boyhood  before  the  embank- 
ment was  put  up,  and  when  his  parents  had  often  had,  even  in 
summer,  to  open  the  back  door  of  their  cottage  to  let  the  water 
pour  out*  And  what  a  work  it  had  been,  clearing  up  the  muck 
afterwards  !  "  That's  a  terrible  thing,  the  power  of  water,"  he 
said  solemnly.  "  People  don't  know  what  it  means  who  ain't 
seen  it.     And  it's  rising  every  minute." 

"  What  did  I  tell  you.  Jinny  ?  "  cried  Miss  Gentry.  "  Oh,  Mr. 
Pennymole,  will  my  house  be  safe  ?  " 

"  It's  one  thing,  mum,  to  be  in  the  flood  and  another  to  be  out 
of  it,"  he  responded  oracularly. 

"  Come  along  1  "  said  Jinny  impatiently.  ''  Your  cottage  has 
got  two  steps  to  begin  with,  and  even  if  it  gets  up  to  your  garden, 
you'll  be  safe  inside." 

"  Beggin'  your  pardon,  Jinny,"  corrected  the  oracle.  "  That 
fares  to  sap  the  foundations,  and  then  crack  !  bang  !  you  think 
it's  a  big  gun,  and  down  comes  walls  and  ceilings.  My  gran'fer 
seen  a  whole  row  of  cottages  washed  away.  And  then  there's 
flotsam  what  bangs  about  and  smashes  you  in." 


476  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Miss  Gentry  clutched  wildly  at  Jinny,  dropping  shoes  and 
muff  into  the  swirl.  "  And  Squibs  does  hate  to  get  her  feet  wet," 
she  babbled. 

Alarmed  at  the  effect  of  his  pronouncement,  the  oracle  hastened 
to  tone  it  down  and  to  pick  up  her  things. 

"  No  need  to  get  into  a  pucker,  mum.  You're  all  right,  same 
as  you're  in  the  high  room.  And  Oi  count  ye've  got  a  grate 
upstairs,  which  is  more  than  we're  blessed  with  this  weather. 
That  gre't  ole  stove  can't  git  up." 

"  And  you  could  sew  in  your  bedroom,"  Jinny  added  sooth- 
ingly. "  You've  never  known  it  get  higher  than  the  ground 
floor,  have  you,  Mr.  Pennymole  ?  " 

"  Not  in  my  born  days,"  answered  the  oracle. 

"  But  there's  always  new  things  happening,"  wailed  Miss 
Gentry. 

"  That's  wunnerful  true,"  Mr.  Pennymole  admitted,  smiling. 
"  Oi  never  thought  Oi'd  fare  to  oversleep  myself.  But  the  day 
there  was  that  grand  wedding  at  the  church,  Oi  hadn't  time  to 
make  mv  tea." 

"  And  then  he  had  two  teas !  "  put  in  Mrs.  Pennymole 
hilariously. 

But  before  the  story  had  proceeded  far,  they  all  became  aware 
of  people  hastening  from  every  quarter  towards  the  unsubmerged 
regions,  not  for  safety,  but  for  salvage  ;  carts  and  even  wagons 
with  teams  began  to  come  up,  and  the  bustle  and  cackle  recalled 
Mr.  Pennymole  to  public  duty. 

Leaving  his  wife  to  finish  telling  the  story,  as  well  as  trans- 
ferring the  furniture,  he  joined  a  party  hurrying  on  to  Farmer 
Gale's  five-acre  field,  and  as  Jinny  and  Miss  Gentry  passed  along, 
they  saw  potato  clamps  being  dug  up,  cattle  driven  higher,  corn 
and  hay  unstacked  and  transported,  and  even  threshing  in  hasty 
operation.  The  Sunday  clothes  of  those  who  hadn't  stayed  to 
"  shiften,"  but  emphasized  the  profanity  of  the  scene. 

"  You  see  what  Dissenters  are !  "  said  Miss  Gentry  in 
disgust. 

"  It's  a  matter  of  life  and  death,"  quoted  Jinny  maliciously. 
But  Miss  Gentry  did  not  recognize  her  own  words.  Jinny  went 
on  to  praise  the  true  Christianity  of  these  labourers,  who  though 
ground  down  to  a  miserable  wage,  were  now  dashing  to  Farmer 
Gale's  assistance  even  in  his  absence — for  he  had  apparently  not 
yet  returned  from  his  place  of  worship  at  Chipstone.     One  corn- 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  477 

stack  saved,  she  calculated,  would  be  worth  more  than  he  had 
paid  Mr.  Pennyniole  in  the  last  five  years. 

"  In  this  dreadful  day  of  the  Lord,  it's  souls  that  want  saving, 
not  stacks,"  said  Miss  Gentry. 

Arrived  at  last  on  her  own  doorstep,  she  collapsed  in  Jinny's 
arms.  What  was  the  use  of  not  going  to  Boulogne,  she  demanded, 
if  she  was  to  be  drowned  in  her  bed  ?  At  least  she  might  have 
had  the  hope  of  seeing  her  dear  Cleopatra  again.  And  surely 
the  darling  must  have  written,  must  have  sent  her  address. 
Bundock  must  have  lost  the  letters,  or,  worse,  suppressed  them  I 
He  owed  her  a  grudge  because  she  had  resisted  his  importunities. 
Yes,  Jinny — dead  to  Passion — had  no  idea  to  what  lengths 
people  born  under  other  planets  would  go — even  though  married  ! 
But,  extricating  herself.  Jinny,  with  that  cold  blood  of  hers,  left 
her  patron  to  the  consolations  of  Squibs  ;  she  must  get  home  to 
her  grandfather,  she  explained  ;  he  would  be  worrying  over 
her  fate. 

II 

She  found  him  at  his  telescope,  as  outraged  as  Miss  Gentry, 
and  enjoying  himself  immensely  <jver  the  spectacle  that  shattered 
his  Sunday  dullness.  His  big  Bible  had  been  lugged  upstairs, 
and  now  lay  on  the  bed,  open  at  the  Deluge  ;  aud  the  bucket 
that  received  his  ceiling-drippings  had  been  kicked  over  in  his 
excitement.  *^  That's  the  Lord's  punishment  on  they  Sabbath- 
breakers,"  he  said  gleefully.  Nor  could  all  Jinny's  arguments — 
as  she  wiped  up  his  private  flood — bring  home  to  him  his  inverted 
logic.  "  The  Lord  knowed  'twas  in  their  hearts  to  break  it,"  he 
persisted.  "  ^  And  it  repented  the  Lord  that  He  had  made 
man.'  " 

"  Oh,  it's  not  so  bad  as  the  flood  of  2352,"  said  Jinny,  airing 
her  Spelling-Book  chronology. 

"Wait  till  the  Brad  flows  over  the  dyke,"  he  chuckled. 
"  That'll  spill  all  over  Long  Bradmarsh,  ay,  and  run  down 
towards  ChipstonCo" 

"  Oh,  you  don't  think  it  will  get  over  the  dyke  ?  "  she  said 
anxiously. 

"  Mebbe  to  Babylon  itself,"  he  said  voluptuously. 

"  All  the  more  reason  they  should  try  to  save  what  they  can," 
she  urged.  "  Time  and  tide  wait  for  no  man,  and  why  should 
any  man  wait    for   the   tide  ?      It's   like  with   shepherds  and 


478  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

stockmen  that  can't  ever  have  their  Sunday.  Come  down  to 
dinner." 

But  the  Gaffer^s  eye  was  glued  to  his  tube.  "  That's  as  good 
as  harvest  !  "  he  exclaimed  in  shocked  exhilaration.  "  Dash  my 
buttons  ef  they  ain't  thatchin'  the  stack  they  carted  over  from 
Pipit's  meadow.  And  they're  makin'  new  mangold  and  potato 
clamps." 

"  So  long  as  they  don't  get  largesse,"  Jinny  maintained. 

The  Gaffer  groaned.  "  Largesse  or  no  largesse,  Oi  never  seen 
sech  a  Sunday  in  all  my  born  days.  What  a  pity  Sidrach  dedn't 
live  to  see  it !  " 

When  she  at  last  got  him  to  surrender  the  spy-glass,  she  could 
not  refrain  from  taking  a  peep  herself.  She  was  astonished  at 
the  swift  rise  of  the  waters.  Already  the  hedgerows  were  dis- 
appearing, while  an  avenue  of  elms  rising  mysteriously  out  of  a 
lagoon  was  the  sole  indication  of  a  road  she  had  passed  on  her 
way  to  church.  A  swan  and  cygnets  were  now  sailing  upon  it, 
with  darker  and  less  distinguishable  objects  tossing  around  A 
bed  of  osiers  seemed  to  be  in  its  natural  element  as  it  rose  from 
the  waters  that  islanded  a  farm.  The  black,  snow-pow^dered  barn 
looked  like  the  upturned  hull  of  some  squat  galleon,  and  the 
haystacks  thatched  as  with  hoar-frost  had  the  air  of  cliffs 
crumbling  before  the  sea.  One  clump  of  bare  trees  rose  out  of 
the  glassy  void  like  the  rigging  of  a  sinking  ship.  Her  world  had 
suffered  a  w^ater-change  into  something  rich  and  strange  in  which 
only  the  rare  protuberances  enabled  her  to  trace  out  the  original 
earth-pattern.  Even  seagulls  were  floating,  and  frank-herons 
wheeling,  and  kingfishers  diving.  Her  grandfather  watched  her 
like  one  who  had  provided  the  show.  "'  That  makes  me  feel  a 
youngster  agen,"  he  cried.  "  'Tis  like  the  good  ole  times  when 
there  warn't  no  drainage-mills  ne  yet  Frog  Farms." 

"  Frog  Farm  isn't  swept  away  ?  "  she  cried  with  a  sudden 
clamminess  at  her  heart. 

"  Oi  wouldn't  give  much  for  the  farniture  downstairs,"  he 
said,  with  sinister  satisfaction.  "  That's  the  lowest  house  in  the 
parish.  And  then  ye  deny  'tis  the  Lord's  hand  a-chastenin'  the 
evil-doers.  Oi  reckon  though  they've  packed  their  waluables  in 
the  coach,  the  pirate  thieves,  and  scuttled  off  Beacon  Hill  way." 

Without  replying,  she  gazed  through  a  tremulous  telescope  at 
the  distant  point  where  the  Brad  seemed  to  wind  immediately 
behind  the  roof  of  Frog  Farm   but  the  convolutions  and  dip  of 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  479 

the  land,  aided  hy  an  intervening  copse,  hid  everything  from  her 
except  the  quaint  chimney,  though  the  smoke  fluttering  in  the 
wind  showed  that  if  the  Gaffer's  hypothesis  was  correct,  evacua- 
tion must  have  been  recent.  It  was  something,  though,  to  see 
the  farmhouse  still  uncoil apsed,  though  her  im.agination  sur- 
rounded it  with  water  like  the  more  visible  farm.  She  was  glad 
to  remember  that  Master  Peartree  at  least  would  have  been  in 
his  hut  on  higher  ground,  keeping  vigil  over  the  lambing  ewes. 

"  Somebody  ought  to  go  and  see  if  they've  really  got  away," 
she  said  anxlouslv. 

"  They'll  be  all  right  ef  the  Lord  don't  want  to  punish  'em," 
he  said  surlily.  "  And  ef  He  do,  'tain't  for  nobody  to  baulk 
Him  1  "  ' 

After  dinner  he  forwent  his  nap.  The  Lord  had  sent  him  not 
only  a  spectacle  but  a  great  new  eye,  and  had  even  denuded  the 
trees  that  might  in  summer  have  blocked  his  view,  and  he  was 
not  the  man  to  "  sin  his  mercies."  Jinny  had  ceased  to  be  anxious 
about  his  catching  cold  at  the  casement — evidently  his  life  of 
driving  had  inured  him — so,  wrapping  a  blanket  round  his  smock 
and  the  new-knitted  muffler  round  his  throat,  she  left  him  to 
enjoy  himself  while  she  cleared  away  the  frugal  meal. 

Suddenly  she  heard  a  roar  as  of  distant  thunder,  followed  by 
a  great  shout  from  above. 

'^t's  busted!     It's  busted!" 

She  rushed  up  in  alarm,  nearly  upsetting  his  bucket  herself. 

"  Behold ! "  he  cried  Biblically,  handing  her  the  glass. 
"  That's  busted  a  piece  out  of  the  bank," 

She  looked — and  beheld  indeed  !  In  the  embankment  that 
guarded  Long  Bradmarsh  gaped  a  breach  of  some  fifty  yards,  while 
giant  blocks  of  clay  that  must  have  weighed  tons  were  swirling 
like  children's  marbles  towards  the  Long  Bradmarsh  meadows 
whence  panic-stricken  labourers  were  now  fleeing  backwards. 

"  It's  caught  'em,  the  Sabbath-breakers,"  said  the  Gaffer 
ecstatically.     "  That  didn't  wait  to  flow  over  the  dyke." 

"  I've  got  to  go  and  give  help  on  the  Ridge,"  she  said  resolutely. 
And  not  all  his  arguments  or  threats  could  stay  her  cart.  "  Christ 
said  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  Sabbath," 
she  urged,  and  the  text  silenced  him.  But  it  was  not  so  easy  to 
dispose  of  the  pietism  of  Methusalem,  whose  blank  incredulity 
before  her  threatened  disturbance  of  the  holy  day  was  only 
overcome  by  the  convincing  commonplaceness  with  which  Nip 


48o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

barked  around.  The  poor  horse  must  have  imagined  that  he 
had  overslept  himself  and  that  it  was  Tuesday.  Fortunately 
"  the  Ridge  "  lay  downwards  for  him,  and  the  crowds  and  the 
everyday  bustle  finally  disillusioned  him  of  his  Sunday  feeling, 
and  he  allowed  his  cart  to  be  laden  with  the  carrots,  swedes,  and 
mangolds  that  had  lain  in  such  snug  rows  packed  betwixt  hurdles 
and  a  sort  of  stiaw  thatch  kept  down  by  long  poles.  At  first 
Jinny  kept  looking  round  for  the  rival  carrier,  but  either  he 
would  not  demean  his  coach  to  such  service,  or  he  was  water- 
bound. 

Jinny  asked  several  people  whether  they  had  seen  the  Flynts 
and  whether  Frog  Farm  would  be  safe,  but  if  nobody  could 
supply  any  information,  nobody  thought  there  would  be  any 
serious  danger. 

"  They'll  be  all  right,"  said  Farmer  Gale  -  bitterly .  "  It's  my 
land  there  that's  drowned,  and  my  stacks  that  are  floating."  He 
was  on  the  scene  now,  directing  operations,  cursing  his  looker. 
For  the  first  time  the  breezy  Cornishman  doubted  his  father's  cute- 
ness  in  buying  up  soil  whose  fatness  was  only  due  to  its  centuries  of 
repose  under  water.  "  The  land'U  be  out  of  heart  for  years,"  he 
lamented.  Jinny  could  not  help  a  secret  satisfaction  in  seeing 
the  hard-hearted  farmer  confronted  by  a  force  as  remorseless  as 
that  which  had  swept  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  out  of  his  cottage.  Nor 
could  she  escape  a  still  subtler  pleasure  in  thus  heaping  coals  of 
fire  on  his  head.  But  both  these  joys  as  well  as  her  anxiety 
about  Frog  Farm  w^ere  soon  lost  in  the  glow  of  service.  It  was 
such  a  delight  to  be  no  longer  shamming  work,  while  to  give  had 
become  an  almost  forgotten  pleasure. 

When  she  returned  to  the  field  for  a  second  load,  the  flood  was 
already  creeping  over  it,  and  the  early  darkness  and  a  pale 
quarter-moon  threw  a  new  weirdness  over  these  unknown 
waters.  She  found  the  lane  outside  still  more  flooded,  and  as 
Methusalem  plashed  homewards,  she  encountered  Uncle  Lilli- 
whyte rising  from  the  waters  like  a  disreputable  river-god.  He 
was  dexterously  spearing  mangolds  as  they  floated  past,  and 
stacking  them,  mixed  with  drowned  hares,  in  a  wheelbarrow, 
itself  apparently  flotsam.  He  had  an  air  of  legal  operations, 
there  was  none  of  the  furtive  look  that  goes  v/ith  bulges  in 
smock-frocks,  and  Jinny,  too,  thought  he  was  justly  avenged  on 
his  evictor,  though  she  refused  to  desecrate  the  Sabbath  by 
buying  any  of  his  spoils.     She  could  not  help  feehng  rewarded 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  481 

when  Nip  appeared  with  a  rabbit  gratis.  As  he  had  not  killed 
it,  she  refrained  from  rebuking  him,  and  he  came  in  subsequently 
for  the  bones.  But  his  pride  at  having  thus  at  last  achieved  his 
ideal  almost  turned  his  head,  and  all  the  more  bitter  was  his 
humiliation  when  his  next  epoch-making  capture — a  dead  rat — 
was  rejected  with  reproach. 


Ill 

If  Jinny  had  much  to  tell  her  grandfather  over  the  rabbit 
stew,  he  in  his  turn  had  no  lack  of  material  for  excited  conversa 
tion.  Both  were  exhilarated,  rejuvenated  by  the  metamorphosis 
of  their  landscape  ;  it  seemed,  more  pungently  even  than  snow, 
to  re-create  the  wonder  of  the  world.  It  was  a  gay  young 
grandfather  that  rattled  off  the  farces  and  tragedies  of  the  day's 
drama :  a  sodden  haystack  hurled  into  the  Brad,  a  cart  of 
mangolds  overturned  in  a  watery  field,  a  bullock  swimming  for 
dear  life  and  landing  safely  on  a  mound  where  stampeded  horses 
cowered  ;  dead  ewes  floating — and  just  in  the  lambing  season 
too  ! — men  in  boats  rescuing  pigs  and  poultry  from  the  grounds 
of  water-logged  cottages,  and  hauling  clothes  and  bedding  through 
the  windows. 

^'  There's  hundreds  o'  Farmer  Gale's  acres  drowned  what  was 
cropped  with  seed,"  he  said  with  gloomy  relish,  "  and  regiments 
o'  rats  ha'  saved  theirselves  atop  of  his  stacks.  When  they've 
goffled  their  fill  they  wentures  down  for  a  drink,  the  warmints, 
and  then  up  again.  Same  as  'twixt  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea 
for  they  onfortunit  stacks." 

That  night  a  white  mist  rising  from  the  waters  blotted  out 
everything,  but  the  next  morning,  when  Jinny  went  up  to  induce 
her  grandfather  to  descend  to  breakfast,  she  found  to  her  surprise 
and  relief  that  though  the  Brad  w^as  still  hurling  itself  through 
the  breach,  the  bulk  of  Long  Bradmarsh  w^as  still  unflooded,  still 
alive  with,  salvage  parties.  The  lov/  arms  of  the  marsh  mills 
were  still  working  with  frantic  efficiency.  What  miracle  had 
saved  this  village  ?  Her  grandfather  explained  that  there  must 
still  be  some  righteous  men  there.  But  Jinny,  looking  through 
his  glass  for  herself,  discovered — after  a  preliminary  peep  at  the 
Frog  Farm  chimney,  whose  smokelessness  was  a  fresh  relief — 
that  the  breach-water  instead  of  flowing  evenly  over  Long 
Bradmarsh  had  half  found,  half  scooped  out  for  itself,  a  sort  of 

2H 


482  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

river-bed.  Turning  aside  before  a  slight  rise,  it  had  veered 
round  sharply  eastward,  and  then  curving  back  westward,  when 
it  met  another  obstacle  three  hundred  yards  later,  it  had  finally 
poured  itself  over  the  dyke  back  into  the  Brad. 

"  That's  a  mercy,"  she  said,  expounding  it. 

"  But  now  there's  a  chance  of  both  they  rivers  flowin'  over," 
he  pointed  out  hopefully. 

But  as  she  gazed,  she  grew  aware  of  a  new  phenomenon. 

"  Why,  the  Brad's  going  backwards  1  "  she  said. 

He  snatched  the  glass  from  her  hand.  "  So  it  be  !  "  he  agreed. 
"  But  that's  onny  where  the  little  river  busts  in  agen  the  wrong 
way  and  pours  along  the  top  o'  the  real  river." 

Jinny  was  thrilling  all  down  her  spine.  Again  the  sibylline 
prophecy  of  Miss  Gentry  rang  in  her  ears  : 

When  the  Brad  in  opposite  ways  shall  course^ 
Lo  I  Jinny's  husband  shall  come  on  a  horsey 
And  Jinny  shall  then  learn  PassiorC s  jorce. 

Overwhelmed  by  the  uncanny  divination  of  the  dressmaker — a 
"  wise  woman  "  in  good  sooth  it  now  appeared — she  sank  into 
a  chair,  her  whole  being  aquiver  with  a  premonition  that  she 
had  reached  the  crucial  point  of  her  destiny.  Who  was  it 
coming  on  a  horse  ?  Who  but  Will,  that  incarnation  of  eques- 
trian  grace  ?  He  was  coming  to  rescue  her,  the  dear  silly, 
imagining  her  menaced  by  the  flood.  As  if  she  had  not  got 
Methusalem  !  As  if  Blackwater  Hall  was  not  an  Ararat !  But 
his  foolishness  was  part  of  the  Fate — might  he  not  even  ride  his 
horse  through  the  doorway,  lying  along  its  back  to  avoid  the 
lintel,  and  thus  be  practically  "  on  his  hands  and  knees  "  ?  In 
her  grandfather's  present  happy  mood,  the  old  man  might  very 
well  accept  that  solution.  x4nd  Will  himself  would  be  "  carried 
in,"  and  might  equally  accept  the  compromise.  Absorbed  in  her 
sophistic  day-dream,  she  sat  there  till  even  the  old  man  at  his 
tube  remembered  breakfast.  Nor  did  she  again  volunteer  to 
help  in  the  fields.  All  day  she  stayed  at  home  over  her  Monday 
housework  and  wash-tub,  awaiting  the  horseman,  afraid  to 
stir  out. 

And  with  equal  patience  her  grandfather  sat  at  his  all-day 
show.  Engineers  and  gesticulating  figures  appeared  on  the 
broken  bank  for  his  delectation,  and  a  mile  or  so  lower  down 
labourers  began  to  shovel  gault  (culch,  he  called  it  to  Jinny),  and 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  483 

lighters  laden  with  it  tried  to  sink  themselves  in  the  breach,  but 
some  were  sv/irled  away  like  bandboxes  and  others  turned 
turtle — a  comical  sight  that  made  him  roar  with  laughter.  At 
last  exciting  operations  with  ropes,  stretched  across  the  river, 
succeeded  in  keeping  some  in  place.  After  that  a  big-sailed 
barge  came  to  the  rescue — he  could  even  recognize  the  two 
punters  with  long  poles  who  eked  out  the  sail.  Ravens'  grand- 
son, that  ne'er-do-well,  and  Ephraim  Bidlake,  whose  grand- 
father's barge  used  to  "  competition  wuss  than  coaches,"  he  told 
jinny.  They  had  brought  a  cargo  of  the  blue-grey  stuff — 
hundreds  of  sacks — and  "  dinged  "  it  into  the  breach,  wellnigh 
clogging  it  up.  And  then — oh  side-splitting  drollery  ! — the  dyke 
had  gone  and  "  busted  "  in  another  weak  place — near  the  bridge. 
And  they  were  left  "  like  dickies  "  with  empty  sacks,  while  the 
folk  in  the  new-swamped  fields  went  scurrying  like  rats. 

So  continuous  were  her  grandfather's  shouts  of  glee  that 
Jinny  ceased  to  attend  to  them,  and  would  not  come  up  to  see 
even  the  new  gap.  She  was  the  more  amazed  w^hen  at  supper 
he  talked  of  having  seen  "  'Lijah  Skindle "  fishing  from  the 
window  of  Frog  Farm.  "  Oi  called  ye  to  come  and  see,"  he  said 
reproachfully  when  she  expressed  incredulity.  "  He  got  his  line 
danglin'  from  a  broomstick  !  " 

The  sight  of  Miss  Gentry  astride  a  broomstick  seemed  far 
likelier  to  Jinny.  In  the  first  place,  no  window  of  the  farmhouse 
was  visible  from  theirs;  in  the  second,  how  could  Elijah  Skindle 
be  living  there  ? 

"  What  would  Mr.  Skindle  be  doing  at  Frog  Farm  ?  "  she  said. 
"  So  long  as  he  ain't  taken  Annie  there  !  "  he  answered.  "  Oi 
shouldn't  wonder  ef  the  whole  place  comes  tumblin'  down  like 
they  fir-trees.  For  the  more  Oi  set  thinkin'  on  it,  the  more  Oi 
see  as  it's  to  punish  that  competitioning  pirate  that  the  flood's 
been  sent." 

"  Don't  talk  like  that,  Gran'fer.     I  expect  you've  been  dozing." 
"  Oi  tell  you  Oi  seen  him  and  his  broomstick,"  he  cried  angrily. 
"  And  when  he  couldn't  catch  nawthen,  he  tied  his  han'kercher 
on  it  and  signalled  with  it,  too." 

She  did  remember  now  that  Elijah  and  Will  had  become 
thicker  than  their  respective  relations  to  Blanche  seemed  to 
warrant,  and  she  had  shrewdly  divined  that  Will  wanted  to 
flaunt  his  indifference  to  his  rejection,  and  Elijah  to  pose  as  the 
magnanimous  conqueror.     It  was  not  impossible,  therefore,  that 


484  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

the  horse-doctor,  summoned  to  Snowdrop  or  Cherry-blossom  on 
the  Saturday  afternoon,  had  been  caught  by  the  torrential  rain 
and  the  gale  and  persuaded  to  stay  the  night  in  that  spare 
bedroom  once  occupied  by  Mr.  Flippance.  But  more  probably 
it  was  only  another  of  the  old  man's  illusions.  "  Why,  there 
wasn't  even  any  smoke  from  the  chimney,"  she  reminded  him. 

"  Mebbe  there  was  too  much  water  in  it,"  he  chuckled. 

Jinny's  blood  ran  cold,  but  not  on  account  of  the  Flynts.  She 
was  still  too  obsessed  with  the  vision  of  Will  arriving  on  a  horse 
to  imagine  him  or  his  parents  immured  by  the  waters.  No,  the 
feeling  that  stole  over  her  was  that  Elijah  Skindle  was  not  living 
at  the  farm,  but  that  while  the  occupants  had  evacuated  it,  he 
had  been  drowned  outside  it — swept  away  with  his  trap — and 
that  her  grandfather  had  seen  yet  another  ghost. 

"  If  anybody  was  signalling,"  she  pointed  out,  "  the  engineers 
and  the  wherrymen  would  have  seen  him." 

"  They  can't  see  through  a  brick  wall,"  he  retorted  crushingly. 
"  Frog  Farm  ain't  got  no  eyes  on  the  Brad.  Depend  on't,  'tis 
the  Lord's  finger." 

She  was  still  incredulous.  But  the  moment  supper  w^as  over, 
she  ran  up  to  examine  the  farmhouse  afresh.  The  wind  had 
"  sobbed  down  "  ;  the  sky  was  sprinlded  with  stars,  seen  through 
frequent  rifts  in  the  clouds ;  and  the  moon,  though  only  a 
crescent,  emerging  through  a  cloud-rack,  shed  a  silver  radiance 
over  the  watery  waste,  and  cast  over  it  black  rippling  bands  of 
shadow  from  the  bare  elms  and  poplars  rising  from  it  in  such 
unearthly  beauty.  And  there  in  the  region  of  Frog  Farm, 
perceptible  even  to  the  naked  eye,  a  mysterious  reddish-yellow 
light,  like  some  new  star,  threw  its  far-reaching  beams  upon  the 
softened  flood.  A  closer  examination  revealed  that  some  of  the 
trees  of  the  fir-copse  had  been  sapped  and  now  lay  heaving 
gently — the  old  man,  she  rem^embered,  had  alluded  to  fallen  firs 
— and  that  the  ruddy  rays  came  from  a  farm  bedroom,  no  longer 
shut  out  by  the  foliage.  The  smoke,  too,  was  rising  again.  It 
was  clear  that  the  house  was  not  uninhabited,  and  that  her 
grandfather  might  very  well  have  seen  Elijah  Skindle,  while  the 
absence  of  smoke  all  day  might  be  traceable  to  the  inability  of 
the  occupants  to  get  a  light  earlier  from  sodden  matches. 

"  But  if  they  are  starving  and  signalling,"  she  cried  agitatedly, 
"  we  must  tell  people.     We  must  send  a  boat." 

"  We  can't  get  no  boat,"  he  said  philosophically. 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  485 

^'  But  you've  seen  plenty  of  boats,"  she  urged,  "  I  saw  two 
myself  rowing  over  the  five-acre  field.  And  there's  that  fowling- 
punt  on  the  bank." 

"  That !  Oi  seen  that  fleetin'  bottom  up  !  Ye  can't  goo  out 
to-night.  Ye'd  be  drownded.  Why,  look  there  1  That's  a  dead 
cow  from  the  Farm  meadow  !  " 

"  Where  ?     I  can't  see  anything," 

"  There  !  Bobbin'  near  the  copse."  He  pointed  and  snatched 
the  glass  from  her.  "  Why,  that's  a  hoss,"  he  shouted  exultantly, 
'^  a  black  hoss  !  That  should  be  Snowdrop,  ef  it  ain't  Cherry- 
blossom  !  "  He  was  on  his  feet  now,  quivering  v/ith  excitement, 
his  blanket  falling  from  his  shoulders. 

"  Why,  how  can  you  be  sure  in  this  light  ?  "  she  said,  trembling 
no  less.     "  It  may  be  a  brown  horse,  or  even  a  plough-horse." 

"  That's  a  black  coach-hoss  sure  enough,  black  as  his  heart,  the 
pirate  thief.  What  did  Oi  tell  ye  ?  '  Wengeance  is  mine,  saith 
the  Lord.  Oi  will  repay.'  "  He  looked  so  solemn  in  the  moon- 
light, with  his  white  beard,  and  his  white-sleeved  arm  pointing 
starward,  that  she  almost  felt  his  standpoint  had  a  prophetic 
justification.     But  she  shook  off  the  spell. 

"  Sit  down,  Gran'fer,"  she  pleaded,  readjusting  his  blanket. 
"  Mr.  Flynt  was  in  his  right." 

"  Ef  he  was  in  his  right,  why  has  the  Lord  drownded  his  hoss  ?  " 
he  demanded  fiercely.  "  Do  ye  set  down,  yerself."  And  he 
clutched  her  wrist  with  his  bony  hand. 

"  Let  me  eo  !  "  she  cried.     "  There's  Mr.  Skindle  to  be  saved 


too." 


"  There  ain't  no  danger  for  them — 'tis  your  boat  what  'ud  come 
into  colloosion  with  trees  and  cattle  and  fences  and — why,  just 
look  at  that  !  " 

He  dropped  her  hand  to  scrutinize  the  strange  object  awash. 
''  Hallelujah  !  "  he  cried  hysterically.  "  That's  the  top  o'  the 
coach  !     Dedn't  Oi  say  'twas  a  funeral  coach  ?  " 

She  shivered,  and  a  cloud,  coming  just  then  over  the  moon, 
seemed  to  eclipse  her  resolution  to  rouse  the  neighbours.  The 
sudden  pall  of  darkness  made  the  old  man  clutch  her  again — his 
own  evocation  of  the  funeral  coach  had  frightened  him.  "  Oi 
won't  be  left  alone  by  night,"  he  quavered  and  wiped  a  watery 
eye.  Jinny  refused  to  take  it  as  pathos.  "  You'll  blind  yourself 
with  that  telescope,"  she  said  sternly.  But  inwardly  she  felt  he 
was  not  so  wrong.     In  that  dim  fitful  light  there  was  more 


486  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

danger  to  the  would-be  rescuers  than  to  the  party  so  snugly 
gathered  round  some  bedroom  hearth  in  Frog  Farm.  That 
ruddy  lamplight,  still  brighter  by  the  extinction  of  the  moon, 
beamed  reassuringly  over  the  waters.  Skindle's  broomstick-rod 
might  have  represented  merely  an  effort  to  break  the  monotony 
of  imprisonment — it  was  no  proof  that  they  had  been  cut  off 
from  their  larder.  And  with  the  waters  now  calmer,  the  house 
that  had  stood  the  gale  was  not  likely  to  subside  in  the  night. 
No,  they  were  probably  safer  where  they  were  than  if  "  rescued." 
She  must  wait  till  the  morning. 

A  loud  thumping  at  the  kitchen-door  shattered  her  specula- 
tions. Jinny's  heart  beat  almost  as  loudly.  So  the  horseman 
had  come  at  last,  unheard  in  their  excitement,  choosing  the  back 
door  as  less  of  a  Surrender.  Will  had  escaped  then.  He  was  not 
water-logged.  She  flew  down  the  stairs  three  at  a  time.  Poor 
Will !  Poor  Snowdrop — or  was  it  Snowdrop  that  was  saved  and 
was  now  bearing  his  master  to  the  heart  that  would  give  him 
compensation  for  all  his  shattered  fortunes  ?  Alas,  no  proud 
cavalier  waited  to  bear  her  off  clasped  to  his  breast,  no  smoking 
steed — only  a  tatterdemalion  before  whose  malodorous  corduroys 
and  battered  beaver  she  recoiled  in  as  much  disgust  as  disappoint- 
ment, though  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  bore  in  his  grimy  claws  a  plump 
partridge,  for  which  he  demanded  only  twopence. 

*'  But  the  season's  over,"  she  murmured. 

"  That's  onny  the  tother  day  and  'twarnt  me  as  killed  it,"  he 
said.  "  The  Lord  don't  seem  to  care  about  they  game  laws  ;  He 
killed  even  on  Sunday." 

"  Don't  take  the  Lord's  name  in  vain,"  Jinny  rebuked  him. 
*'  We  can't  understand  His  ways." 

"  They  do  seem  wunnerful  odd,"  admitted  the  nondescript. 
"  Ever  since  Oi  was  a  brat  Oi've  tried  to  puzzle  'em  out,  but  it 
git  over  me.  Same  as  a  man  now  perished  in  this  here  flood, 
and  went  straight  to  hell.  Wouldn't  that  be  a  cur'ous  change  for 
the  chap — ^like  the  Lord  larkin'  with  him  !  " 

"  Perhaps  there'll  be  a  flood  that  will  put  out  hell  one  day," 
said  Jinny  evasively. 

"  Martha  Flynt  should  be  sayin'  there  ain't  no  hell  to  put  out. 
That  looks  as  if  ye've  got  to  goo  to  Heaven,  do  what  ye  will." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  think  she  means  that,"  said  Jinny,  smiling  despite 
her  heavy  heart. 

"  That's  what  the  humes  sounded  like  as  her  and  the  looker 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  487 

used  to  sing  of  a  Sunday  afore  Master  Will  come  home  and 
stopped  'em.  Oi  used  to  listen  to  'em  chance  times — put  me  in 
mind  of  my  young  days  like — but  Oi  don't  howd  with  their 
doctrines." 

"  With  whose  then  ?  "  asked  Jinny,  interested. 

"  With  nobody's.  Dedn't  Oi  say,  git  over  me  ?  Ef  the  Lord 
was  to  offer  me  Heaven  or  Hell,  which  d'ye  think  Oi'd  choose  ?  " 

"  Is  there  a  catch  in  it  ?  "  she  asked  cautiously. 

"  We've  got  to  be  catched  in  one  or  the  tother,"  he  said,  mis- 
understanding. "  But  Oi  mislikes  'em  both.  Will  you  be 
buyin'  the  bird  ?  " 

As  Jinny  produced  two  of  her  only  three  pennies,  she  began  to 
realize  for  the  first  time  the  revolution  in  her  fortunes  implicit 
in  the  destruction  of  the  coach.  But  her  heart  was  aching  too 
poignantly  for  any  joy  of  victory.  She  could  not  savour,  as  her 
grandfather  was  savouring,  the  miraculous  collapse  of  the  com- 
petition. Victory  or  defeat — heaven  or  hell — she  thought  rue- 
fully, she  misliked  them  both.  She  was  consumed  with  yearning, 
anxiety  and  compassion  for  the  young  rival  who  had  failed  to 
"  come  on  a  horse,"  who  had  perhaps  no  longer  even  a  single  horse 
to  come  on.  Nor  did  the  fate  of  Snowdrop  or  Cherry-blossom — 
that  superb  vitality  turned  into  a  floating  carcase — leave  her 
jubilant.  In  the  morning,  indeed,  she  was  to  awake  to  a  sense 
of  her  triumph.  But  what  endless  hours  of  insomnia  and  night- 
mare had  first  to  be  lived  through  !  Again  Queen  Victoria,  who 
was  also  quite  intelligibly  Miss  Jinny  Boldero,  was  saved  by 
"  The  Father  of  the  Fatherless  "  from  the  gins  and  stratagems 
of  the  red-haired  villain  who  cut  away  London  Bridge  just  as 
Her  Majesty  was  going  over  it  in  her  gold  coronation  coach  with 
its  six  black  ponies  and  its  canvas  tilt.  StruggUng  in  the  cold 
waters,  she  was  held  up  by  Henry  Brougham,  Esq.,  who  helped 
her  to  scramble  athwart  the  naked  carcase  of  a  black  pony  on 
which  she  floated  to  shore,  when  it  stood  upon  its  feet,  and  with 
Queen  Jinny  astride  the  saddle  and  Miss  Gentry  (in  bridal  attire) 
not  at  all  surprisingly  on  the  pillion,  galloped  towards  Blackwater 
Hall  across  the  dry  Common  where  anglers  sat  with  broomsticks. 
And  while  she  was  lying  along  the  pony's  mane  to  get  through 
the  door  to  the  red-haired  young  man  (now  become  the  hero), 
just  as  she  was  beginning  to  feel  Passion's  force,  that  stupid 
Miss  Gentry  came  crack  with  her  neck  against  the  lintel,  and  ofi^ 
rolled  her  head  on  the  floor,  its  moustache  dabbled  in  blood. 


488  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Picking  herself  up,  and  her  scattered  bedclothes,  and  rubbing 
her  bruised  crown,  Jinny  congratulated  herself  on  sleeping  in  a 
chest  of  drawers  in  such  proximity  to  the  floor. 

But  the  bang,  slight  as  it  was,  had  cleared  aw^ay  the  vapours 
of  sleep  and  she  awoke  to  a  consciousness  of  victory  brimming 
her  veins  with  vital  joy.  Song,  so  long  strange  to  her  lips,  unless 
simulated  to  lull  Gran'f er,  came  back  to  them  as  she  dressed,  and 
when  she  prayed  ''  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread,"  it  was  no 
longer  an  almost  despairing  cry  to  a  deaf  heaven. 

Running  upstairs  to  see  if  Frog  Farm  was  safe,  she  was  relieved 
to  find  it  smoking  imperturbably,  though  up  to  its  bedrooms  in 
water,  and  a  glimpse  of  Caleb  at  the  casement  serenely  lowering 
a  bucket  into  the  flood  was  still  more  reassuring.  But  she  was 
thunderstruck  when  her  grandfather  gleefully  pointed  out  that 
the  bridge  to  Long  Bradmarsh  had  broken  down,  almost  as  in 
her  dream,  and  she  half  looked  round  for  the  coronation  coach. 
Doubtless,  she  felt,  surveying  the  broken  bankside  arch,  which 
lay  in  uncouth  masses  impeding  the  current  and  sending  it 
swirling  through  the  still-standing  central  arch,  the  breach 
hard  by  in  the  dyke  had  helped  to  sap  the  bridge,  and 
she  was  glad  to  see  this  breach  being  already  repaired  by 
her  friends,  Bidlake  and  Ravens,  with  a  gang  of  labourers,  for 
they  were  clearly  heaven-sent  minions  for  the  expedition  to 
Frog  Farm. 

But  if  she  sang  on  as  she  cleared  the  breakfast  things,  her 
grandfather  was  in  still  higher  feather.  Not  only  had  the 
morning  brought  to  him  as  to  Jinny  a  keener  realization  of  the 
collapse  of  their  mushroom  rival,  but  he  had  discovered  floating 
near  the  bridge  a  black  horse  which  he  persisted  was  the  second 
horse,  and  though  Jinny  maintained  it  was  the  same  horse,  the 
old  man  had  more  faith  in  heaven.  So  occupied  was  he  in 
gloating  over  this  distant  horse  swirling  against  the  ruined 
brickwork,  with  its  stiflPened  leg  pointing  skywards,  that  he  had 
not  seen  Methusalem  harnessing  under  his  nose,  and  it  was  not 
till  Nip  started  his  hysteric  prelude  to  departure  that  Mr.  Quarles 
was  aroused  to  Jinny's  proceedings. 

"  Ye  can't  goo  out  in  the  flood,"  he  called  down  in  alarm. 

"  It's  Tuesday,"  she  called  up.-  The  blood  was  dancing  gaily 
in  her  veins.  The  frosty  morning  air  was  fresh  and  invigorating. 
She  was  young  and  unconquered.  The  long  anxiety  was  oven 
Methusalem  had  survived  the  coach,  even  as  he  had  survived  the 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  489 

murderous  wiles  of  Elijah  !  She  put  her  horn  to  her  lips  and 
blew  a  challenge  to  the  world. 

"  But  there  bain't  no  bridge,"  cried  her  grandfather. 

"  Daniel  Quarles  hasn't  been  downed  by  a  coach,"  she  said, 
*'  and  he  isn't  going  to  be  downed  by  a  flood." 

"  No,  by  God,  he  ain't  1  "  cried  the  old  Carrier  delightedly. 
"  Oi'll  goo  round  miles  by  the  next  bridge  sooner  than  miss  my 
day.  And  they  false  customers'U  ha'  to  come  to  me  on  their 
hands  and  knees  ere  Oi  takes  'em  back.  Goo  to  the  coach,  ye 
warmints,  Oi'm  done  wi'  ye  1  And  Oi  wish  ye  joy  of  your  fine 
black  bosses  all  a-jinglin'  and  a-tinklin'.  He,  he,  he  1  Make 
muddles,  do  Oi  ?  Oi  never  made  no  muddle  like  that,  stabHn' 
my  hosses  with  the  frogs.  Do  ye  give  a  squint  at  that  carcase, 
Jinny,  as  ye  pass  by  and  ye'll  see  it  ain't  the  one  but  the  tother." 

"  And  do  ye  don't  squint  into  that  spy-glass  no  more,"  she 
called  up  in  merry  earnest.     "  Do,  ye'll  get  a  glass  eye." 

He  laughed.  "  No  fear.  Have  they  writ  ye  yet  about 
Sidrach's  stone  ?  " 

Annoyed  with  herself  at  having  called  up  that  memory,  she 
feigned  deafness.  "  You'll  find  partridge  for  your  dinner,"  she 
called  out,  and  flicking  playfully  at  Methusalem  she  burst  forth 
joyously  :   "  There  is  Hey " 

"  There  is  Ree  !  "  responded  the  sepulchral  bass  from  above, 
and  then  as  the  old  horse  stepped  out,  both  voices  declared  in 
duet  that  'twas  Methusalem  bore  the  bells  away.  Jinny,  weaving 
her  whip  with  a  last  backward  glance  at  her  grandfather,  saw 
him  wildly  agitating  his  telescope,  to  which  his  coloured  hand- 
kerchief was  tied  like  a  flag  of  victory. 


IV 

Methusalem  waded  stolidly  towards  the  river,  his  cart  nearly 
floating  in  places.  On  the  drier  artificial  slope  leading  up  to 
the  bridge  she  drew  rein,  and,  jumping  down,  walked  cautiously 
over  the  two  still  standing  arches  to  hail  Ephraim  Bidlake,  now 
some  hundred  yards  down  the  opposite  bank.  As  she  put  her 
horn  to  her  lips  to  summon  him,  she  saw,  quanted  up-stream, 
another  barge  with  a  reinforcement  of  sacks,  and  as  it  must  pass 
under  the  bridge  she  moved  to  the  other  side  to  send  her  message 
by  it  as  it  came  along.  But  the  posse  of  mud-grimed  men  with 
a  last  push  of  their  submerged  poles  fell  prostrate  before  her,  as  in 


490  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

some  Oriental  obeisance,  and  she  heard  the  tops  of  the  gault- 
sacks  scraping  against  the  brickwork  of  the  arch  as  the  boat 
passed  under  it,  so  high  was  the  water.  It  reminded  her  again  of 
her  nightmare.  But  no  heads  came  crack  as  they  gUded  through, 
and  running  to  the  other  side,  she  spoke  the  rising  crew. 

Turning,  she  became  aware  of  Bundock  standing,  bag-bowed,  on 
the  dyke,  amid  a  mass  of  sodden  straw,  gazing  in  horror  at  the 
ruins  and  the  dead  horse  bashing  against  them,  swathed  in 
yellow  weed.  She  advanced  to  the  edge  of  the  void  and  hailed 
him  across  some  fifteen  feet  of  eddying  water. 

"  Ahoy,  Bundock  !  " 

"  For  God's  sake.  Jinny  !  "  he  cried,  startled.  ''  Go  back  ! 
That'll  give  way." 

"  Not  with  7ny  weight  1  "  she  laughed.  "  You  going 
across  ?  " 

"How  can  I?'" 

"  There's  boats,  barges,  wherries,  lighters,  punts,  and  swim- 
ming," called  Jinny,  "  and  you've  got  to  do  your  duty  to  the 
Queen." 

"  And  haven't  I  done  it  ?  "  he  said  pathetically,  exhibiting  his 
soused  leggings.  "  But  there's  only  three  letters  for  Little 
Bradmarsh  and  all  for  the  same  man." 

"  I  can  guess  who  that  is,"  she  said.  "And  yet  you  won't 
kill  three  frogs  with  one  stone." 

Bundock  burst  into  laughter.  "  So  you've  heard  my  joke,"  he 
said  happily,  "  I  do  liven  folks  up,  don't  I,  though  few  have 
the  brains  to  appreciate  aught  beyond  the  Bellman's  silly  puns." 
Then  his  ruddy,  pitted  countenance  resumed  its  m^elancholy 
mien.  "  But  I  can't  joke  about  the  flood.  Jinny,  you  mustn't 
expect  me  to.     There's  poor  Charley  Mott  !  " 

"  Why,  what's  he  got  to  do  with  water  ?  "  Jinny  jested. 

"  Haven't  you  heard  ?     He's  drowned." 

Jinny's  laugh  froze  on  her  lips.  Charley  had  obstinately  gone 
to  fish  in  the  troubled  waters  of  the  Brad,  the  postman  related, 
despite  the  weather.  All  the  Sunday  morning  he  had  fished 
from  the  dyke,  and  was  just  walking  off  to  dine  with  some  pals 
at  "  The  King  of  Prussia  "  when  the  bank  burst,  and  he  was 
caught  by  the  torrent  and  smashed  among  the  whirling  blocks. 
It  was  exactly  like  the  moral  of  the  Spelling-Book,  and  Jinny 
saw  before  her  as  on  a  scroll  of  judgment  the  grey  blurred  type 
of  Lesson  XV  :    "  Harry's  Downfall."     True,  Harry  had  been 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  491 

torn  by  wild  beasts  as  well  as  shipwrecked  on  the  coast  of 
Barbary,  but  in  a  country  without  the  larger  carnivora  a 
complete  analogy  could  not  be  expected. 

"  Poor  Mr.  Mott,"  she  sighed.  And  then,  remembering  the 
case  put  by  Uncle  Lilliwhyte,  had  the  luckless  young  man 
indeed  gone  straight  from  water  to  fire,  she  wondered.  "  It'll  be 
a  relief  for  Mrs.  Mott  anyhow,"  she  said. 

"  A  relief  ?  "  gasped  Bundock.  "  Why,  she's  carrying  on  like 
mad.  Says  it's  all  her  fault  for  trying  to  drive  him^  to  chapel. 
And  that  it  was  Deacon  Mawhood  that  egged  her  on  to  drive  him 
on  the  curb.  And  that  he  was  worth  a  dozen  Deacons,  and  she 
won't  have  any  more  to  do  with  you  Peculiars.  Why,  when  I 
brought  her  the  letters  this  morning,  if  she  hadn't  kept  me  such 
a  time  pouring  out  all  Charley's  virtues,  I  might  have  got  across 
before  this  bridge  broke  down.  Not  that  I  could  have  delivered 
my  letters  anyhow." 

"  I  think  it  broke  in  the  night,"  said  Jinny.  Then  she  fell 
silent,  disconcerted  by  these  illogical  manifestations  of  human 
nature,  and  she  did  not  remember  where  she  was  till  she  found 
Nip  tugging  at  her  dress  and  cowering  on  the  brink  of  the  abyss, 
as  if  afraid  she  would  be  walking  on.  The  wherry,  she  perceived 
too,  was  now  coming  up,  and  young  Ravens'  voice  was  floating 
melodiously  across  the  waters  : 

"'TzV  my  delight  of  a  shiny  night 
In  the  season  of  the  year  !  " 

"  There's  your  ferry,  Bundock  !  "  she  called. 

"  And  what's  the  good  of  going  across  ?  "  he  asked.  "  By 
what  I  see  I  couldn't  possibly  get  to  Frog  Farm." 

"  But  I'm  going  there  !  " 

"  What !  "  He  gazed  towards  her  side  of  the  river,  the 
willows  surging  from  which  alone  marked  the  former  bank. 
Plover  were  flying  with  dismal  cries  over  the  unseen  pastures. 

He  shook  his  head  :•  "  One  inquest's  enough  for  Chipstone." 

"  I'll  take  your  letters,"  she  said  with  a  sudden  thought  that 
made  her  happier. 

Bundock  resisted  the  offer.  His  repugnance  to  seeing  the 
Queen's  mail  sacrilegiously  carried  by  a  member  of  Her  Majesty's 
sex  was  deep-seated,  and  it  was  only  because  he  took  seriously 
Jinny's  threat  to  write  to  his  sovereign  that  he  finally  handed 
the  three  letters  by  a  compromise  to  Ephraim  Bidlake.     Needless 


492  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

to  say  that  as  soon  as  Bundock's  pouched  back  was  turned,  that 
faithful  henchman  transferred  them  to  Jinny. 

When  he  took  her  Httle  horse  and  cart  on  board  his  broad- 
built  wherry,  he  imagined  she  only  wanted  to  be  ferried  across, 
but  she  had  soon  spurred  him  to  the  great  adventure  across  the 
"  drowned  "  meadows.  It  was  a  question  of  life-saving,  she  said, 
and  for  the  British  Navy  as  embodied  in  Bidlake  and  Ravens, 
this  was  enough.  Fortunately  the  females  were  now  lodged  on 
shore,  av/aiting  Mrs.  Bidlake's  annual  event.  Moreover  the 
wherry,  relieved  by  the  other  barge,  had  a  slack  moment,  and 
with  Jinny  to  guide  them  from  the  vantage-point  of  her  driving- 
board  over  hidden  snags  in  the  shape  of  submerged  stiles,  sheds, 
mounds  or  bushes,  the  two  men  punted  boldly  over  the  left  bank. 
The  mast  had  been  lowered,  for  apart  from  the  danger  of  boughs 
catching  in  the  sail,  the  trees  made  a  wind-screen  to  the  pastures. 

It  was  odd  as  the  barge  passed  between  two  willows  on  the 
margin  of  the  river,  to  see  these  trees  reflected  doubly,  at 
once  in  stream  and  in  flood.  There  was  no  difficulty  in  avoiding 
the  larger  flotsam,  though  one  of  Farmer  Gale's  haystacks  was 
only  staved  off  with  Bidlake's  pole,  and  it  was  not  till  they  had 
quanted  to  the  farmhouse  itself  that  the  steering  became  trouble- 
some, for  there  were  no  windows  at  the  back,  at  which  they  were 
arriving,  there  were  farm-buildings  and  floating  stacks  waiting 
to  embarrass  them  at  the  front,  the  so-called  Frog  Cottage 
presented  a  blank  black  wall  at  one  side,  while  the  windowed 
side-wall,  from  which  Martha  had  once  beheld  Bundock  marching 
through  morasses,  was  encumbered,  not  only  by  the  wreckage  of 
the  stable  and  the  mangled  body  of  the  coach,  but  by  Caleb's 
wild  "  orchard,"  in  whose  mystically  rising  oak-branches  and 
pear-tree-tops  poultry,  to  which  fear  had  restored  wings,  were 
seen  to  be  roosting.  But  by  taking  a  wide  course  over  the 
wheat-patch  so  as  to  avoid  the  stacks,  the  barge  v/as  able  to 
double  Frog  Cottage  safely,  to  glide  triumphantly  into  dock, 
and  lie  alongside  Frog  Farm.  The  exciting  manoeuvre  had  been 
accomplished  in  grim  silence — even  Ravens  forgetting  to  sing  as 
they  bumped  over  the  chaotic  remains  of  the  old  log-dyke  and 
raised  wagon-road — and  it  was  not  till  it  was  over  that  Jinny 
found  breath  to  blow  her  horn.  And  as  she  did  so,  she  was 
startled  to  see  behind  the  diamond  panes  of  the  closed  casement 
of  the  central  bedroom — now  on  a  level  with  her  driving-board 
and  almost  opposite  it — a  head  that  vaguely  recalled  Mr.  Duke's. 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  493 

But  the  next  instant  she  recognized  Maria,  and  the  old  black  sow 
was  pushed  aside,  the  casement  flung  open  and  a  red-haired  head 
flung  out.  And  if  Jinny  had  stared  incredulously  at  the  sight 
of  the  pig,  what  word  can  convey  the  dilatation  of  Will's  eyes 
as  they  now  beheld  the  little  Carrier  perched  on  her  accus- 
tomed seat,  whip  in  hand,  as  though  on  the  solid  road  !  It 
was  some  seconds  before  he  even  perceived  the  barge  sustaining 
her  cart. 

"  What  do  you  want  ?  "  broke  harshly  from  his  lips. 

Such  ungraciousness  after  the  perils  of  her  voyage  jarred  upon 
her.  "  Don't  you  want  anything  from  Chipstone  ?  "  she  asked, 
with  a  malice  she  had  not  intended. 

"  No,"  he  barked. 
•  "  Well,  here's  your  letters  I've  carried^''  she  said  demurely. 
"  The  postal  service,  like  the  coach  service,  has  broken  down." 
She  hurled  the  letters  through  the  window  just  as  he  was  banging 
it  to,  but  ere  it  could  close  it  was  thrown  open  again,  and  Elijah, 
Maria,  Martha,  and  Caleb  were  tumbling  over  one  another  in 
their  eagerness  to  greet  her. 

"  Jinny  !  "  came  from  all  their  mouths,  even,  it  seemed,  from 
Maria's,  and  she  saw  through  dimming  eyes  that  the  bedroom 
was  a  chaos  of  furniture  and  fowls. 

"  Here,  catch  hold  of  that  rope,  one  of  ye,"  cried  Ephraim 
Bidlake.  "  Tie  it  to  a  bedpost."  He  had  already  fastened  the 
stem  of  the  boat  to  an  oak,  but  the  current  was  swinging  out  the 
stern. 

It  was  with  a  thrill  that  Jinny  found  herself  gazing  for  the 
first  time  into  Will's  bedroom,  though  its  normal  character  was 
disturbed  by  its  emergency  use  as  a  sitting-room,  poultry-run, 
pigsty,  and  salvage  store.  The  wet  crinkled  motto :  "  When  He 
giveth  quietness,  who  then  can  make  trouble  ?  "  was  lying  as  if 
in  ironic  questioning  atop  a  pile  of  parlour  ornaments,  and 
Martha's  silk  sampler  lay  stained  and  sodden  on  the  very  chair 
on  which  Mr.  Flippance  had  sat  admiring  it.  "  Unstable  as  water," 
human  destinies  seemed  to  Jinny  as  she  surveyed  the  jumble  in 
the  whitewashed  attic.  But  there  was  too  much  bustle  for 
reflection,  nor  could  she  even  see  clearly  what  Will  himself  was 
doing,  for  Maria  and  Elijah  were  jostling  each  other  at  the 
window  in  their  efforts  to  get  through,  and  the  vet.'s  cap  fell  on 
the  deck  in  his  agitation. 

^'  Pigs  first !  "  called  Jinny,  and  as  though  obediently,  Elijah 


494  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

clutching  at  the  edge  of  her  tilt  scrambled  on  the  foot-board  of 
the  cart  and  thence  to  the  deck.  *'  Nice  behaviour,  leaving  us 
to  starve,"  he  grumbled  in  the  same  pachydermatous  spirit,  as 
he  clapped  his  cap  on  his  chilled  cranium. 

''  How  could  you  starve  with  all  those  fowls  ?  "  said  Jinny. 

"  They  weren't  for  weekday  eating,  the  old  woman  said. 
Nothing  since  Sunday  but  dry  bread  !  " 

"  As  long  as  it  was  dry,"  Jinny  laughed. 

"  It  wasn't  even  that  1     Simply  sopping." 

"  Well,  all  prisoners  get  bread  and  water,"  said  Jinny  in  mock 
consolation.  Ravens  had  hastened  to  pull  out  a  greasy  package. 
Elijah  waved  it  aside  with  a  sniffy  air.  *'  Thanks — I'll  wait  till 
we  land  now." 

'^  Elijah  not  fed  by  Ravens,"  laughed  Jinny.  Outwardly  she 
was  in  the  gayest  of  moods,  bandying  words  again  in  quite  her 
old  vein.  But  it  was  a  feverish  gaiety — underneath,  every  nerve 
was  astrain  for  Will's  reappearance  with  all  it  forboded  of  ecstasy 
and  conflict.  "  Come  along,  Maria,"  she  called,  for  the  barge 
had  drifted  out  a  little  on  its  window-rope,  and  the  sow's  eagerness 
was  damped.  Now  encouraged,  she  allowed  herself  to  be  helped 
into  the  cart  by  Caleb  above  and  Bidlake  below.  After  the  fowls 
had  been  chivied  beside  her,  there  was  a  delay. 

"  The  missus  be  in  our  bedroom  packin'  some  things  for  the 
night,"  apologized  Caleb,  returning  to  the  window.  "  She  can't 
sleep  without  her  nightcap,  it  wouldn't  be  decent,  and  she  likes 
me  to  change  my  red  shirt  for  bed." 

"  But  where  will  you  sleep  ?  "  Jinny  now  asked,  feeling 
suddenly  responsible  as  for  an  eviction. 

"  Mr.  Skindle's  kindly  offered  to  put  us  all  up  till  we  looks 
round,"  said  Caleb. 

"  It's  the  big  house  I'm  furnishing  for  my  wedding  regardless," 
Elijah  explained.  "  And  I'm  going  to  give  them  their  food,  too, 
and  it  isn't  the  sort  of  food  they've  given  me  either.  But  when 
you're  cooped  up  with  folks  in  danger  of  your  life,  you  get  closer 
to  them  and  don't  grudge  expense,  especially  when  they're  in 
low  water." 

"  In  low  water  ?  "  echoed  Jinny.     "  Oh,  Mr.  Skindle  !  " 

"  You  know  what  I  mean,"  Elijah  replied.  "  Poor  Will's  lost 
his  horses — such  a  come-down.  Not  that  he  ever  had  enough  to 
appeal  to  a  girl  brought  up  to  be  a  lady.  In  my  new  house  now 
there's  three  spare  bedrooms — I'll  get  my  mother  to  make  'em 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  495 

all  ready — that'll  be  one  apiece  for  'em  if  they  care  to  spread 
themselves." 

"  But  then  how  about  Maria  ?  "  Jinny  jested. 

"  Maria  !  "  he  grunted.  "  It's  all  her  fault.  I  always  said 
she  v/as  the  fussiest  pig  I  ever  attended.  A  mere  cramp,  through 
not  taking  exercise  all  this  rainy  weather  ;  fright  cured  her  in  a 
jiffy.  But  think  of  the  valuable  time  she's  cost  me  !  I  wouldn't 
have  come  but  to  oblige  Will.  No  wonder  they  call  the  place 
Frog  Farm." 

''  I  don't  hear  any  croaking  but  yours,"  flashed  Jinny.  *'  Why, 
if  time  is  all  you've  lost,  you're  lucky.     Where's  your  horse  ?  " 

"  You  didn't  think  I'd  risk  Jess  on  these  roads  in  the  weather 
we've  been  having  ?  I  only  agreed  to  come  in  the  coach  Saturday 
night  and  go  back  Sunday  morning  with  Farmer  Gale  and  his 
wife  when  they  drove  in  to  chapel.  Poor  Blanche  !  She  must 
have  been  in  a  terrible  twitter  when  I  didn't  turn  up  at  the 
Sunday  dinner  1  " 

"  I  wonder  she  didn't  come  out  for  you  in  a  boat  ?  "  said  Jinny 
slyly. 

"  She'd  be  thinking  I'd  been  called  to  another  patient.  We 
medical  gents  can  never  call  our  time  our  own,"  he  explained,  but 
there  was  a  tremor  of  uneasiness  in  his  words.  He  pulled  out 
his  empty  pipe  and  stuck  it  between  his  blackened  teeth.  Caleb 
here  appeared  with  uncouth  bundles,  and  Martha  (embellished 
by  sudden  Sunday  clothes)  with  a  last  frightened  chicken,  and 
as  the  barge  had  now  quite  tautened  its  window-rope  and  left  a 
watery  gap,  Martha's  descent  was  a  fluttering  episode. 

"  Not  so  easy  as  the  New  Jerusalem  coming  down,"  gasped 
Caleb,  when  she  was  safely  installed  inside  the  cart  with  Maria 
and  the  poultry  and  the  dazed  Nip. 

Ephraim  Bidlake,  intimating  he  could  not  wait  on  this  jaunt 
to  lower  any  of  the  furniture,  had  gone  off — in  a  little  dinghy 
he  carried — to  rescue  the  fowls  in  the  orchard  branches,  and 
their  fearful  cackling  and  the  excitement  of  his  perilous  quest 
now  drew  all  eyes,  except  Jinny's,  which  remained  furtively  bent 
on  the  window,  from  which  the  drifting  of  the  barge  had  carried 
her  away.  It  was  with  relief  that  she  heard  Martha  suddenly 
exclaim  : 

"  But  Where's  the  boy  ?  " 

"  Oi  count  he's  got  such  a  mort  o'  new-fangled  things,"  scoffed 
Caleb.     "Tooth-brushes  and  underclothes  and  shavin'-strops — 


496  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

happen  he'll  want  a  whole  portmantle.  Oi  offered  to  help  him 
with  his  poor  arm,  but  he's  that  fiery  and  sperrited — ye  re- 
member, Jinny,  how  he  lugged  his  great  ole  box  all  the  way 
Chipstone  !  " 

"  But  what's  the  matter  with  his  arm  ?  "  Jinny  asked  anxiously. 

"  Didn't  you  see  his  sling  ?  "  called  Elijah  proudly. 

"  Broken  ?  "  Jinny  murmured,  paling. 

"  Only  a  simple  fracture."  He  puffed  complacently  at  his 
pipe,  forgetting  it  was  empty. 

"  You've  got  to  go  back,  Caleb,  and  help  the  poor  lad,"  said 
Martha,  with  renewed  agitation. 

"  Then  you  might  as  well  get  my  hand-bag  from  my  room," 
Elijah  added.     "  I  didn't  think  of  it  in  the  rush." 

Ravens,  labouring  mightily  with  his  pole  to  larboard,  pushed 
the  barge  back  to  the  window,  and  as  Caleb  obediently  clambered 
in  again,  Martha,  growing  calmer,  began  telling  Jinny  how  Will 
had  swum  out  to  the  stable  to  save  the  horses,  but  had  only  got 
his  arm  kicked  for  his  pains.  And  then,  of  course,  he  couldn't  help 
her  in  carrying  any  of  her  furniture  upstairs — it  was  a  mercy  he  got 
back  at  all — and,  it  being  Sunday,  "  Flynt  "  would  help  only  to 
save  life,  though  you'd  have  thought  from  Maria's  squeals,  as  she 
was  haled  upstairs,  that  she  was  being  slaughtered  rather  than 
saved.  As  for  Mr.  Skindle,  he  seemed  stricter  with  the  Sabbath 
than  even  the  Peculiars,  and  would  do  nothing  but  try  to  light 
the  fire. 

"  Tou  were  at  home.  I  hadn't  got  but  the  clothes  I  stood  in," 
Elijah  explained.  "  What  should  I  have  done  if  I'd  gone  up  to 
my  neck  in  water  ?  " 

"  Here's  your  bag,"  Caleb's  voice  broke  in  from  the  window, 
"  but  Will  won't  come,  Martha  1  " 

"  Won't  come  ?  "  shrilled  Martha,  and  before  Jinny  could  stop 
her,  she  vv^as  on  the  footboard  and  had  disappeared  through  the 
casement. 

"  He's  an  ungrateful,  ill-tempered  fellow,"  EHjah  commented, 
picking  up  his  bag,  and  changing  his  collar  as  he  talked.  "  I 
don't  call  him  a  gentleman.  He  can't  forgive  that  his  arm  was 
set  by  a  vet.,  and  he  sits  about  like  a  broody  hen.  Asked  me 
not  to  mention  it,  which,  of  course,  as  a  gentleman,  I  won't. 
What  good  do  you  suppose  it  would  do  me  to  have  it  known — 
I  said  to  him-— seeing  I've  already  got  the  family  connexion  with 
Maria  ?     But  he  got  very  cross,"  Elijah  wound  up  innocently. 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  497 

"  though  I  said  I  wouldn't  even  charge  pig's  price,  but  would 
swap  the  fee  and  Maria's  too  against  his  horses,  provided  I  could 
recover  the  carcases." 

"  I've  got  to  stay  here,"  cried  Martha,  reappearing  hysterically 
at  the  window.     "  He  won't  come." 

"  What  nonsense  !  "  cried  Jinny,  losing  her  temper.  "  We'll 
all  go  and  pull  him  out." 

"  He's  locked  himself  in  my  bedroom — the  one  with  the  side 
window — you  can't  get  in  from  here."  She  wrung  her  hands  ; 
these  days  of  durance  and  danger  had  evidently  told  upon  her 
nerves. 

"  I'll  smash  the  door  in  and  his  head  too  !  "  growled  Ravens, 
his  foot  on  the  window-sill. 

"  No,  no,"  Jinny  commanded,  swinging  herself  suddenly  past 
him.  "  You  take  your  wife  down,  Mr.  Flynt.  She's  too  excited. 
I'll  rout  him.  out." 

Martha  protested  shrilly  that  where  she  had  failed,  a  stranger 
could  not  succeed.  No,  she  must  stay  with  her  boy,  tend  his 
poor  arm  !  But  the  men  overruled  her  and  were  returning  her 
gently  but  firmly  to  the  footboard  of  the  cart  when  she  cried 
desperately ; 

"  Wait !     Wait !     I've  forgotten  something  under  my  pillow." 

"  I'll  get  it !  "  Jinny  promised.     "  What  is  it  ?  " 

But  Martha  refused  to  say.  It  was  very  precious.  It  was  in 
an  envelope.  It  wasn't  for  Jinny  to  see.  In  vain  Jinny  declared 
she  wouldn't  open  the  envelope.  Martha's  hysteric  protests 
mingled  with  the  frenzied  cackling  of  the  fowls  that  Ephraim 
Bidlake  was  still  chasing. 

Leaving  the  males  to  pacify  Martha  and  deposit  her  in  the 
cart.  Jinny  stooped  under  the  barge-rope  and  threaded  the  litter 
betwixt  the  bed  and  the  right-hand  door — the  other  door,  she 
knew,  gave  on  the  bedroom  bisected  by  Frog  Cottage.  Pausing 
but  a  moment  to  look  down  the  now  literal  well  of  the  staircase, 
in  which  dead  mice  floated,  she  rapped  imperiously  at  the 
connubial  chamber  under  the  gable. 

"  Go  away,  mother  !  "  came  the  fretful  answer. 

"  I'm  not  your  mother — if  I  were  I'd  slap  you.  A  nice  state 
you've  got  her  into  !  " 

"  What  do  you  want  ?  "  he  said  in  a  changed  tone. 

"  Your  mother's  left  something  precious  in  an  envelope  under 
her  pillow." 

2  I 


498  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  I  thought  you  said  you'd  never  cross  my  doorstep.'^ 

*'  I  didn't — I  came  by  the  window-sill."  But  even  as  her  lips 
gave  the  obvious  repartee,  her  mind  beheld  her  grandfather 
scrambling  into  the  room  of  the  Angel-Mother,  and  it  all  seemed 
ineffably  silly  in  view  of  the  tragic  realities  of  life.  As  if  she 
would  not  have  crossed  even  an  enemy's  threshold  to  bind  up  a 
broken  arm  ! 

"  Well,  suppose  you  return  the  same  way,"  he  retorted. 

*'  That's  what  I  mean  to  do,"  she  said,  angry  again.  "  I've 
got  my  rounds." 

"  What  !     In  the  barge  ?  " 

"  I  don't  want  a  boat.  Long  Bradmarsh  has  kept  its  head 
above  water  and  Methusalem's  going  just  as  strong  as  before 
the  flood."  Then,  afraid  she  had  recalled  his  own  dead  horses, 
she  added  hurriedly  :    ''  How's  your  arm  ?  " 

"  That's  nothing,  thank  you.     Good-bye." 

"  Not  without  the  envelope." 

Their  words  came  muffled  through  the  door-panels,  and  a 
barrier  as  obstructive  seemed  to  divide  their  spirits,  though  they 
yearned  dumbly  towards  each  other. 

"  I'll  put  it  under  the  door,"  he  said  surlily. 

."  I  don't  wonder  you're  ashamed  to  look  me  in  the  face." 

Jinny  was  thinking  of  his  behaviour  to  his  mother.  But  it 
was  an  unfortunate  remark.  Will  zvas  ashamed,  mortally 
ashamed  of  his  defeat.  He  had  come  along  from  over  the  seas, 
he  felt,  swelling  and  strutting  and  jeering  !  Poor  little  Jinny  I 
Poor,  comical  little  village  carrier  !  Oho,  he'd  soon  crush  her  1 
Oho,  he'd  soon  make  an  end  of  her  !  And  now  !  His  coach 
smashed  up,  his  horses  drowned,  his  capital  gone,  his  savings — 
the  bulk  spent  on  his  fine  clothes — barely  sufficient  to  carry  him 
along  while  seeking  some  new  employment,  even  his  parents 
impoverished  by  the  flood,  their  very  roof  perhaps  about  to 
collapse  over  his  head  !  While  she —  !  Here  she  was  with  her. 
invincible  old  cart,  walking  the  waters,  posing  as  the  saviour  of 
the  whole  family,  carrying  on  the  postal  service  and  the  coach 
service,  blowing  her  triumphant  trumpet  on  her  immemorial 
Tuesday  round,  her  old  clients  doubly  at  her  mercy  !  What 
humiliation  could  be  more  bitter  ? 

And  the  worst  of  it  all  was  that  the  ache  of  passion,  nourished 
by  her  rejection  of  his  new  advances,  had  become  intolerably 
poignant.     Jinny  !     Jinny  !     He  seemed  to  hear  it  all  around 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  499 

him,  Jinny  !  Jinny  !  from  morning  to  night — and  even  all 
through  the  night,  floating  through  his  dreams  Uke  a  strain  of 
music.  And  Jinny  herself  was  ever  before  him  night  and  day, 
with  her  eyes  laughing  and  her  tongue  stinging. 

But  now  that  she  was  there  in  the  flesh,  with  only  a  door 
between  them,  he  felt  he  could  not  open  it.  He  must  never  look 
in  her  face  again  till  he  had  rehabilitated  his  fortunes.  No  word 
of  love  had  ever  been  spoken  between  them.  But  could  he  see 
her,  stand  near  her  now,  and  not  speak  it  ?  And  a  fine  story  it 
would  sound,  even  if  his  lips  proved  spiritless  enough  to  attempt 
it.  He  had  loved  her  from  the  first  moment  he  had  seen  her  in 
the  courtyard  of  "  The  Black  Sheep,"  nay,  from  childhood,  and 
had  tried  to  steal  her  business  !  Had  loved  her  and  might  have 
driven  her,  with  the  grandfather  she  supported,  to  die  in  a 
ditch  1  And  now  that  it  was  he  who  was  in  the  ditch,  could  he 
come  prating  of  love,  add  her  enhanced  scorn  to  his  self-con- 
tempt ?  No,  he  had  missed  his  opportunities  !  A  nice  hand  to 
offer  her — even  if  there  was  any  chance  of  her  taking  it — a  hand 
swathed  in  a  sling,  symbol  of  his  crippled  fortunes  !  He  must 
set  out  on  his  travels  again — that  was  clear — ^v^^ork  his  passage — 
as  soon  as  his  bones  had  grown  together — to  those  new  AustraUan 
goldfields  that  everybody  was  talking  of,  and  then,  when  his 
self-respect  had  grown  together  too,  he  would  write  to  her  and 
ask  her  to  wait  for  him.  And  if  she  still  said  "  No  "—or  had 
already  said  "  Yes  "  to  a  better  man — why  what  else  had  he 
deserved,  monkeying  around  with  a  flirt  who  was  not  worthy 
even  of  Elijah  ! 

As  Jinny  now  heard  him  moving  speechlessly  to  get  the 
envelope,  the  voice  of  Ravens  carolling  the  popular  "  Gipsy 
King,"  told  her  that  Martha  had  been  quieted  dov/n — unlike  the 
fowls,  which  were  still  squawking  under  Bidlake's  coaxings. 

"  /  confess  I  am  hut  a  mauy 

My  feelings^  who  pleases  may  knoiv^ 
I  am  fond  of  my  girl  and  my  ca7i. 
And  jolly  companions  a  row  !  " 

Suddenly  she  heard  Will  laughing. 
"  What's  up  ?  "  she  called,  more  brightly. 
"  Well  of  all  the —  !  "     xA.nd   then  an  envelope  was  pushed 
under  the  door.     "  She  hasn't  opened  it  yet !  " 


500  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Jinny  stooped  down.  It  was  the  letter  from  Will  that 
Martha  would  not  let  her  read  in  the  Spring  of  '51  ! 

"  Well,  she  knew  what  was  in  it,"  said  Jinny,  her  eyes  misting. 
"  And  you  oughtn't  to  laugh  at  such  a  proof  of  love.  Nobody 
else  would  call  that  a  precious  treasure." 

The  w^ord  "  love  "  sent  vibrations  through  them  both,  despite 
the  woodwork  between. 

"  Well,  there's  money  in  the  others  anyhow,"  he  said,  and 
three  opened  envelopes  came  unexpectedly  under  the  door — the 
letters  she  had  just  brought  to  him. 

"  What  are  these  for  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  You  may  as  well  have  them — commissions  for  the  coach." 

"  For  me  ?  "  Jinny  said,  touched. 

"  Yes,  I'd  be  obliged  if  you  helped  me  out." 

"  Oh,  Will !  "  Her  voice  was  as  broken  as  his  prid6  seemed 
to  be.     But  his  mood  was  less  of  meekness  than  of  self-scourging. 

"  W^ell,  you  said  the  coach  service  had  broken  down,"  he 
reminded  her. 

"  I  didn't  mean  to  twit  you — I'm  sorry " 

"  What  for  ?  You  told  me  I'd  get  stuck  and  come  to  you  to 
pull  me  out." 

"  But  I'm  so  sorry,  really.  Poor  Snowdrop  !  Poor  Cherry- 
blossom  !  " 

"  Didn't  you  call  it  a  funeral  coach  ?  Good-bye,  you've  got 
the  treasure." 

"  You'd  better  come  too." 

"  No,  thank  you." 

"  You  needn't  be  beholden  to  the  cart  if  that's  what's  sticking 
in  your  gizzard.     You  can  get  off  at  the  dyke." 

"  Not  me.     You  won't  see  me  again — not  for  a  long  time." 

"  Rubbish  !     I  can  see  you  now  through  the  keyhole." 

"  So  long  as  I  don't  see  you,"  he  said  gruffly. 

"  You'll  see  me  before  you're  a  day  older." 

"  Bet  my  bottom  dollar  I  won't." 

"  A  dashing  young  lad  from  Canada,''^  she  carolled.  "  Once 
a  great  wager  did  lay —  Why  have  you  buried  your  face  in 
your  hands  ?  "  she  broke  off. 

"  I  haven't — it's  to  shut  you  out  !  " 

"  Aha  !     So  I  do  come  in  all  the  same." 

Loud  cries  of  "  Jinny  !  Jinny!  "  now  intimated,  like  the  silence 
of  the  rescued  poultry,  that  the  barge  was  preparing  to  cast  off. 


WRITTEN  IN  WATER  501 

"  Just  coming  !  "  she  called  loudly.  "  Good-bye,  you  sullen, 
runty  idiot.     They  can't  wait  any  longer." 

"  Good-bye  !  "  he  growled. 

Her  look  was  mischievous  as  she  ran  off.  But  that  he  could 
not  see  :  he  could  only  hear  the  noisy  banging  of  the  opposite 
door.  He  had  already  forgotten  his  wager.  But  by  hook  or 
crook  she  meant  to  lure  him  out,  if  only  for  an  instant.  That 
was  why  she  came  as  noisily  back  and  thumped  at  his  door 
again.     "  You  can't  be  left  without  food,"  she  said. 

"  That's  my  business.     Let  me  be." 

"  Not  till  I  know  you  won't  starve.  There's  Ravens'  dinner- 
packet  you  can  have." 

"  Take  it  away,"  he  roared. 

Her  eyes  twinkled.  He  had  played  into  her  hands,  empty  as 
they  were.  "  I  won't  take  it  away,"  she  said.  There  was  a 
sound  as  of  angry  dumping  outside  his  door.  Then  the  opposite 
door  banged  and  silence  fell. 

After  a  moment  Will,  drawing  a  sigh,  half  of  relief,  half  of 
despair,  opened  his  door  and  the  next  moment — he  never  knew 
how  it  had  happened  exactly  (still  less  did  he  realize  that  there 
was  no  dinner-packet  there  at  all),  but  since  he  had  only  one 
arm  it  seemed  to  him  afterwards  it  could  not  be  he  that  had 
enfolded  her,  even  if  he  had  done  so  with  his  eyes  when  her  merry 
mocking  face  shone  so  trickily  upon  the  landing,  while  Jinny 
always  felt  that  it  was  precisely  the  arm  out  of  action  that  had 
come  round  her,  just  as  it  was  his  not  coming  on  a  horse  that 
had  made  her  feel  Passion's  force — but  there  they  were  (by  some 
irresistible  flood)  in  each  other's  arms,  with  Jinny's  flower-soft 
cheek  pressed  with  a  wonderful  warmth  to  his  own,  and  her 
silvery  little  voice  crooning  :  "  Oh,  my  poor  Will !  Oh,  my  poor 
Will  !  "  He  knew  immediately  that  there  had  been  nothing  like 
this  in  all  his  motley  experience,  nothing  at  once  so  pure,  so 
sweet,  so  tender.     This  was  the  love  that  lifted,  not  degraded. 

But  Jinny,  though  she  had  no  comparative  lore  of  love  and 
was  all  the  more  absorbed  in  the  absolute  wonder,  uniqueness 
and  completeness  of  it,  knew  more  swiftly  than  her  lover  that 
this  was  no  time  for  dallying.  In  what  seemed  to  him  a  mere 
flash  of  Hghtning  the  whole  episode  was  cruelly  over,  he  was 
being  helped  into  the  barge,  while  Bidlake  was  in  his  bedroom 
untying  the  rope,  and  Jinny  with  motherly  zeal  and  uncanny 
knowledge  was  scrambling  together  his  things  for  the  night. 


502  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

For  her,  too,  the  moment  of  breaking  away  had  been  hard,  and 
as  her  face  moved  from  his,  it  seemed  like  passing  from  a  sunny- 
dime  to  a  polar  world.  But  as  she  now  busied  herself  with  his 
little  equipment,  the  glow  was  back  again  at  her  heart,  and  the 
transfigured  world  of  that  magic  moment  was  hers  again. 

As  the  wherry  began  to  move  off  at  last,  and  Frog  Cottage  was 
doubled  again,  Martha,  who  had  been  laid  snugly  inside  the  cart 
surrounded  by  her  live  stock,  with  blankets  from  the  bed  thrown 
over  her,  threw  them  off,  stretched  her  arms  to  her  receding  farm 
and  burst  into  a  new  passion  of  tears. 

"  Dear  heart !     Dear  heart  1  "  cried  Caleb,  almost  as  agitated. 

"  Shall  we  ever  see  our  things  again  ?  "  she  sobbed. 

"  That's  nawthen  to  cry  over,  dear  heart,  even  ef  we  don't. 
We've  got  to  thank  the  Lord  for  givin'  us  the  use  of  Frog  Farm 
all  they  long  years." 

But  Martha  sobbed  on,  unconsoled. 

"  And  Will's  been  taken  from  me  too." 

"  No,  no,  Martha,"  Caleb  reassured  her.  "  There  he  is  by  the 
starn,  smokin'  his  pipe.  'Tis  middlin'  clever  to  my  thinkin'  to 
fill  it  one-handed." 

Still  Martha  refused  to  be  comforted.  So  spasmodic  were  her 
gulpings  that  Nip  set  up  a  sympathetic  howl  and  Maria  a  per- 
turbed squeal.  But  none  of  these  sounds — not  even  Ravens' 
singing — could  drown  the  celestial  music  Will  and  Jinny  heard 
in  their  hearts. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE 

As  John  the  apostel  sygh  with  syghty 

I  syghe  that  cyty  of  gret  renoun, 
Jherusalem  so  newe  and  ryally  dyght^ 

As  hit  wacz  lyghtfro  the  heven  adoun, 

"  Pearl  "  (Fourteenth  century), 

I 

Jinny's  passage  through  Long  Bradmarsh  with  her  overflowing 
freight  of  fares  and  live  stock  was  like  a  triumphal  progress.  The 
loungers  outside  "  The  King  of  Prussia  "  actually  raised  a  cheerv. 
Fresh  from  the  excitement  of  the  Mott  inquest,  they  knew  the 
adventurous  significance  of  her  dripping  cart-wheels  and  dry  tilt, 
and  were  quick  to  see  the  symbolic  significance  of  her  carrying 
the  disabled  driver  of  "  The  Flynt  Flyer,"  though  its  destruction 
was  still  unknown  to  them.  At  the  instance  of  Elijah,  she  went 
round  by  Foxearth  Farm,  so  as  to  put  up  Maria  and  the  poultry 
there,  as  well  as  to  reassure  Blanche  of  his  safety.  Though  the 
interview  with  the  latter  was  naturally  veiled  from  the  occupants 
of  the  cart,  it  was  obvious  to  them  that  it  was  Mrs.  Purley  who 
was  doing  the  talking.  Her  voice,  wafted  to  them  through  walls 
which  dulled  the  actual  words,  was  like  an  endless  drone,  each 
sentence  fusing  breathlessly  into  the  next  in  a  maddening  mean- 
inglessness.  Elijah  returned  with  a  dejected  mien :  due  not 
merely,  it  transpired,  to  the  cascade  that  had  broken  over 
him,  but  to  the  fact  that  Blanche  was  just  washing  her  head 
(that  generation  did  not  speak  of  its  hair)  and  unable  to  see  him. 
"  As  if  you  hadn't  suffered  enough  from  water,"  said  Jinny 
sympathetically. 

She  had  her  first  view  that  day  of  Mr.  Skindle's  bridal  mansion. 
Its  two  stories  rose  in  new  red  brick  on  the  outskirts  of  Chip- 
stone,  in  a  forlorn  field  that  was  just  being  "  developed,"  and  its 


504  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

architecture,  from  bow- window  to  chimney-stack,  was  an  imita- 
tion of  the  residence  of  Dr.  Mint,  the  leading  human  doctor. 

"  There's  Rosemary  Villa  !  "  said  Elijah  proudly,  and  Will 
smiled  at  the  recollection  of  Bundock's  jape  and  Blanche's 
merriment. 

Ere  Elijah,  leaping  down  first,  could  mount  his  beautifully 
whitened  steps,  the  door  was  opened  excitedly  and  a  gaunt  grey- 
haired  charwoman,  with  a  smear  on  her  cheek,  dropped  her  grate- 
blacking  brush  and  fell  upon  Elijah's  neck  in  a  spasm  of  emotion. 
"  Thank  God  !  Thank  God  1  "  she  sobbed. 
"  Here  1  Don't  do  that  1  "  said  Elijah,  writhing  in  her  grasp. 
He  was  blushingly  disconcerted  by  this  assertion  of  maternity 
before  company  :  she  had  so  long  accepted  the  position  of  drudge 
that  he  had  forgotten  that  his  absence  during  the  flood  might 
reawaken  the  mother.  "  You're  all  black !  "  he  explained, 
disentangling  himself. 

"  That's  mourning  for  you  !  "  Jinny  called  merrily  from  her 
cart,  and  the  jest  relieved  the  situation.  She  looked  curiously 
at  the  lank,  aproned  figure,  fancying  she  caught  a  hint  of  grace 
in  the  movement  of  the  limbs  and  a  gleam  of  fire  in  the  dark 
eyes.  But  this  dim  sense  of  the  tragic  passing  of  romance 
could  not  even  faintly  obscure  her  own  happiness,  on  which  the 
imminent  separation  from  Will  was  the  only  cloud.  Except  for 
the  thrilling  contact  achieved  in  helping  him  to  alight,  she  had 
to  part  with  him  less  cordially  than  with  Caleb,  who  to  her 
surprise  and  Martha's  gave  her  a  smacking  kiss  ere  he  stepped 
down.  "  Thank  you,  dearie — ye've  saved  our  lives,"  he  said. 
Jinny  scoffed  at  that — the  gratitude  was  due  to  Bidlake  and 
Ravens.  "  Well,  the  missus'll  have  to  kiss  them^'^  he  sniggered. 
"  You  do  your  own  kissing,"  said  Martha  sharply.  "  And  keep 
your  kissing  for  your  own,  too."  iVll  this  talk  of  kissing  but 
aggravated  the  pang  of  the  frigid  parting  with  the  one  person 
who  mattered. 

"  Good-bye ;  see  you  soon,"  was  all  Will  said. 
"  You  bet  your  bottom  dollar  on  that,"  she  flashed,  with  a 
relieved  smile,  reading  into  his  words  a  promise  to  come  over  the 
very  next  day. 

"  Oh,  I'll  pay  you  next  time,"  he  smiled  back,  and  she  had  a 
delicious  sense  of  his  meaning  to  pay  his  lost  wager  in  the  currency 
with  which  Caleb  had  just  acquitted  his  debt.  She  promised  the 
old  people  she  would  come  round  on  Friday  and  tell  them  how 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  505 

Frog  Farm  stood — if  it  did  stand  !  But  though  her  eyes  exchanged 
with  Will's  secret  promises  for  the  morrow,  an  eternity  of  loneli- 
ness seemed  to  lie  before  her,  as  she  drove  back  to  the  town, 
magnanimously  blowing  the  '*  Buy  a  Broom  Polka  "  to  apprise 
her  faithless  clients. 

II 

So  many  commissions  clamoured  for  her  from  folk  with 
relations  in  the  flooded  area  that  she  had  no  difficulty  in  redeeming 
her  dress  from  the  pawnshop  that  very  day.  But  it  was  not  on 
account  of  the  many  calls  upon  her  that  she  arrived  home  in  the 
dark.  It  was  because  she  had  forgotten  to  command  her  faithful 
ferry's  attendance,  and  been  forced  to  take  the  amazed  Methu- 
salem  miles  round  by  the  farther  bridge.  Her  grandfather 
would  be  anxious,  she  feared  :  then  it  occurred  to  her — not 
wholly  with  satisfaction — that  he  might  have  followed  her  day's 
movements  by  telescope.  But  she  found  him  as  happy  as  she 
had  left  him,  and  with  the  hearth  blazing  like  a  bonfire,  reckless 
of  logs.  He  had  not  observed  her  rescue  of  the  Flynts,  for,  as 
she  had  warned  him,  his  overtaxed  right  eye  had  become  inflamed 
and  throbbed  with  little  darts  of  pain,  and  he  had  been  compelled 
to  fall  back  on  the  voluptuous  venom  of  his  reflections,  supple- 
mented by  a  text  which  he  had  hunted  out  with  his  other  eye. 

"  It  come  into  my  mind  all  of  an  onplunge,"  he  chuckled, 
putting  a  bony  finger  on  a  verse.  "  ^he  horse  and  his  rider  hath 
He  thrown  into  the  sea^"^  she  saw  with  a  shudder.  "  That  won't 
be  long  afore  he  follows  his  hoss,"  said  the  Gaffer  grimly  as  he 
polished  his  lens  for  the  spectacle.  "  Oi  will  sing  to  the  Lord," 
he  read  out,  "  for  He  hath  triumphed  gloriously." 

"  Don't  be  so  wicked,  Gran'fer,"  she  cried. 

"  Wicked  I     That's  roighteous — to  sing  to  the  Lord." 

"  You  don't  want  people  drowned  !  " 

"  Dedn't  he  w^ant  us  to  starve  ?  " 

"  Looks  more  like  his  starving  now.  We  can  afford  to  forgive. 
You're  reading  the  wrong  end  of  the  Bible,  Gran'fer.  We've  got 
to  turn  the  other  cheek." 

"  Sow  Oi  would,  ef  anybody  was  bussin'  me,"  he  cackled. 

Jinny  flushed  and  turned  both  her  cheeks  away. 

"  Why,  the  day  Oi  met  Annie  at  Che'msford  Fair "  he  began. 

"  I  don't  want  to  hear  about  Annie,"  she  said  severely.  "  She 
wasn't  your  wife." 


506  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  That's  why  I  tamed  from  iniquity.  But  she  ain't  nobody's 
wife  now." 

"  No,  poor  thing  !  "  she  said.  "  And  it's  a  pity  she's  Mr. 
Skindle's  mother,  for  he  makes  her  do  all  the  chares  of  his  big 
new  house." 

"  Well,  but  she's  a  woman,  ain't  she  ?  "  he  asked  with 
unexpected  lack  of  sympathy.  "  She'd  have  to  do  her  husband's 
chares." 

"  Not  at  her  age  !  " 

"  At  her  age  I     Annie's  a  young  woman." 

"  Compared  with  you,  perhaps,"  she  smiled. 

"  Git  over  me,  her  having  a  lad  that  size.  Oi  count  she's 
worritin'  over  him,  cooped  up  in  Frog  Farm." 

"  Not  now.     They're  all  safely  out  of  it." 

"  What !     That  pirate  thief's  got  safe  1  " 

"Thank  God  !"^ 

"  That  ain't  God's  doin' — that's  some  evil  interferin'  sperrit 
what  comes  out  o'  dead  bodies,  says  John  Wesley.  Who  took 
'em  off  ?  "  he  demanded  fiercely. 

"  They  came  off  in  Bidlake's  barge,"  she  said  weakly.  "  And 
don't  you  be  so  unchristian.     Isn't  it  enough  he's ?  " 

"  That  ain't  right,  interferin'  with  the  texts  !  "  he  interrupted 
doggedly.  "  Oi  never  could  abide  they  Bidlakes.  Ephraim's 
grandfather  come  competitioning  on  the  canals,  wuss  than 
WiUie  Flynt." 

"  Well,  Mr.  Flynt  can't  competition  any  more,  can  he  ?  I 
expect,"  she  added  with  difficult  lightness,  "  he'll  be  coming 
round  now  to  make  friends." 

"  Come  round,  will  he  ?  Just  let  him  shov/  his  carroty  head 
inside  my  doorway — he'll  be  outside  like  fleck,  Oi  promise  ye." 

"  But  if  he  wants  to  make  it  up !  " 

"  He's  got  to  goo  down  on  his  hands  and  knees  fust." 

"  Perhaps  he  vv^ill,"  she  suggested.  Indeed  she  had  little 
doubt  of  it.  That  wonderful  moment,  with  its  climax  of  mouth 
to  mouth,  had  reduced  this  long  foreseen  obstacle  to  a  grotesque 
bogy.  In  the  light  of  mutual  and  confessed  love  the  perspective 
changed,  and  if  she  had  once  thought  that  she  could  not  have 
borne  to  see  him  grovel  even  for  her  sake,  that  it  would  actually 
impair  the  love  grovelled  for,  she  had  now  been  uplifted  into  a 
plane  of  existence  in  which  for  him  not  to  humour  her  grand- 
father seemed  as  childish  as  the  nonagenarian's  own  demand. 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  507 

The  old  man  now  turned  on  her  a  red-rimmed  probing  eye. 
"  He'd  never  come  crawlin'  to  me  ef  he  warn't  arter  summat. 
And  he's  been  tryin'  to  git  round  you  fust — don't  tell  me  ! 
What's  his  game  ?  " 

"  PerhapvS — ^he'd  like — a  partnership." 

"  Oi  dessay  he  would  !  "  he  chuckled  ironically.  "  He's  got 
brass  enough  for  anythin'.  Why,  the  chap  w^s  arter  you  once. 
Ye  dedn't  know  it,  but  there  ain't  much  hid  from  Daniel  Quarles. 
Oi  suspicioned  him  the  fust  moment  he  come  gawmin'  to  the 
stable.  And  what'll  he  bring  to  the  pardnership  ?  Cat's-meat 
and  matchwood  ?  " 

His  coarseness  jarred  every  nerve,  but  she  kept  to  his  key  of 
jocosity.     "  Didn  t  you  say  he  had  brass  ?  " 

"  He,  he,  he  !  "  he  cackled.  "  But  it's  the  wrong  kind  o' 
brass.  Ef  he  wanted  to  be  a  pardner,  why  dedn't  he  come  when 
he  had  his  coach  and  bosses  ?  " 

"  He  did.     Don't  you  remember  ?  " 

"  Did  he  ?  "  he  said  blankly.     "  Then  why  dedn't  Oi  take 


'em  .?  " 


"  That  was  all  my  fault,  Gran'fer." 

''  No,  it  warn't,  dearie.  It  was  'cause  he  said  Oi'd  made 
muddles.  Oi  remember  now.  He  come  and  swabbled,  arid 
chucked  a  pot  at  me.  And  he's  got  to  goo  down  on  his  hands 
and  knees  for  it  1  " 

Jinny  saw  it  was  hopeless  to  unravel  these  blended  memories 
of  Will  and  Elijah,  as  grotesquely  interwoven  as  one  of  her  own 
nightmares,  on  whose  formation  it  seemed  to  throw  light.  She 
was  glad,  though,  that  the  sharp  edges  of  the  actuality  had  now 
faded. 

"  Yes,  yes — he  shall,"  she  promised  soothingly. 

"  And  then  there  was  that  weddin'-cake  what  Mr.  Flippance 
sent  us,"  burst  up  now  from  the  labouring  depths. 

"  Yes — wasn't  that  a  lovely  cake  ?  "  she  agreed. 

"  Oi  offered  him  a  shiver — shows  'twarn't  me  as  v/anted  to 
swabble.  But  he  lifted  his  whip  at  me  and  Oi  snapped  it  in  two 
like  my  ole  pipe  when  John  Wesley  stopped  my  smokin'.  Oi 
don't  want  no  pardnerships." 

"  Of  course  not,  Gran'fer." 

"  Daniel  Quarles  it's  been  for  a  hundred  year,  and  Daniel 
Quarles  it's  a-gooin'  to  remain." 

'^  Of  course.     Daniel  Quarles." 


5o8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  And  he's  got  to  goo  down  on  his  hands  and  knees." 

"  And  so  have  I,"  she  laughed,  "  for  we' ve  let  our  bonfire  die 
down.  Poor  Mr.  Flynt — he's  got  a  great  admiration  for  you, 
spite  that  you've  licked  him." 

"  Oi  guessed  you  and  him  been  gammickin'.  You  can't  hide 
much  from  Daniel  Quarles.  And  ef  that  little  Willie  has  got  a 
proper  respect  fof-  his  elders  and  betters,  that  shows  Oi  larnt  him 
a  lesson." 

"  You  did,  Gran'fer.  He's  a  changed  man.  There  !  Isn't 
that  a  nice  blaze  again  ?  He's  broken  his  right  arm,  too,  poor 
fellow." 

But  here  she  had  blundered.  The  old  man's  face  lit  up,  not 
from  the  fire,  but  with  a  roaring  flame  of  its  own.  "  Thank  the 
Lord,"  he  shouted,  "  as  hears  the  prayer  of  the  humble.  The 
high  arm  shall  be  broken,  says  the  Book,  and  it's  come  true. 
The  arm  what  dreft  the  hosses  is  broken  like  the  coach  !  "  He 
ended  with  a  fresh  cackle  and  rubbed  his  skinny  hands  before 
the  blaze. 

"  You  didn't  pray  for  that  ?  "  said  Jinny,  white  and  rebuking. 
"  That  was  unchristian," 

"  That's  what  King  David  prayed.  Jinny,  and  he  was  a  man 
after  God's  own  heart.  '  Break  thou  the  arm  of  the  wicked  ' — 
Oi'U  show  it  you  in  the  Psalm." 

"  I  don't  want  to  see  it — King  David  wasn't  a  Christian  yet. 
And  we've  got  to  forgive  and  forget,  and  not  bear  a  grudge 
for  ever,  especially  when  a  man's  down.  Think  of  John 
Wesley." 

"  Happen  you're  right,  Jinny,"  he  said,  softening.  "  We've 
got  to  forgive  the  evil-doer,  and  ef  the  Lord's  got  him  in  hand 
Oi  count  we  needn't  trouble — he'll  git  all  he  desarves." 

And  with  that'  Jinny  felt  fairly  content. 


Ill 

But  though  the  ground  was  thus  prepared  for  his  advent,  Will 
did  not  come.  "  What  are  you  prinkin'  yourself  for  ?  "  her 
grandfather  asked  in  the  morning.  "  It  ain't  your  day."  It 
was  certainly  not  her  day.  It  was  more  Hke  a  night — a  long 
agony  of  expectation  with  every  rustle  of  wind  on  the  dead  leaves 
sounding  like  his  footstep.  Towards  dusk  she  even  swept  the 
water-logged  landscape  with  the  now  neglected  telescope.     If  she 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  509 

did  not  find  him,  she  found — what  was  almost  as  soothing — a 
reason  for  his  not  coming.  The  broken  bridge  !  How  could  he 
go  all  those  miles  round  ?  Joyfully  she  called  herself  a  fool,  and 
awaited  the  letter  he  would  send  instead.  The  letter  would  fill 
up  the  Thursday  and  on  the  Friday  she  would  go  to  him. 

But  even  this  milder  expectation  of  a  visit  from  Bundock  went 
unfulfilled.  At  first  she  thought  with  some  relief  that  Bundock 
was  again  shirking  the  circuit.  But  no  !  The  glass  revealed  tKe 
slave  of  duty  serving  Beacon  Chimneys.  Throwing  on  her  jacket, 
but  bonnetless,  she  ran  across  the  Common  to  meet  her  letter. 
But  Bundock  only  gave  her  grumbles  at  the  overstrain  on  his 
feet,  and  leaving  him,  to  hide  her  dismay,  she  w^alked  blindly  up 
Beacon  Hill  till  she  was  startled  to  come  upon  Master  Peartree 
in  the  bosom  of  his  new-born  flock.  It  did  not  even  occur  to 
her  that  this  was  a  proof  he  had  escaped  the  flood,  and  that  the 
occasion  called  for  congratulation.  But  the  sight  of  his  lambs 
bounding  and  his  ewes  scooping  out  mangolds  brought  to  mind 
his  old  account  of  a  sheep  that  had  broken  its  arm  "  in  a  roosh," 
and  at  once  a  second  rush  of  joy  at  her  silliness  and  a  still  more 
paradoxical  pleasure  in  Will's  broken  arm  flooded  her  soul. 
How  could  he  write,  the  poor  boy  ?  It  was  not  that  she  had 
really  forgotten  the  state  of  his  arm — indeed,  she  had  thought 
of  the  sling  as  clogging  the  springiness  of  his  walk,  and  making 
it  still  more  impossible  for  him  to  come — only  she  must  be  going 
crazy  again,  she  felt ;  just  as  in  the  days  when  she  had  taken 
home  wedding-cakes  and  brought  Elijah  hairpins.  Her  eyes  now 
fiJled  with  happy  tears  and,  joyous  as  the  yeanlings  whose  tails 
vibrated  with  such  voluptuous  velocity  as  they  sucked,  she  gave 
chase  to  a  little  black  lamb  and  kissed  its  sable  nose. 

That  brought  her  thoughts  back  to  the  flood  by  way  of  Mother 
Gander's  hostelry  and  its  drowned  landlord,  and  she  inquired  at 
last  about  Master  Peartree's  losses.  They  had  been  limited  to 
one  bullock,  she  was  glad  to  hear,  though  no  such  glow  of  Christian 
feeling  possessed  her  as  she  had  recommended  to  her  grandfather, 
when  the  shepherd-cowman  proceeded  to  estimate  that  what 
with  stacks,  root-crops,  and  winter-wheat.  Farmer  Gale  was  the 
poorer  by  several  thousand  pounds.  Other  shepherds  had  been 
badly  hit,  but  he  himself — thanks  to  the  Almighty — had  got 
more  twins  and  triplets  than  ever,  and  taking  her  round  his 
plaza  of  straw  he  showed  her  the  yellow-splashed,  long-legged 
lambkins  in  the  thatched  pens,  one  set  of  which  he  would  have 


Sio  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

to  feed  by  bottle,  for  handsome  mothers  did  not  give  the  most 
milk,  he  moralized. 

She  ran  homewards  as  full  of  the  joy  of  life  as  the  leaping 
lambs,  though  she  was  living  only  for  the  morrow.  Through  the 
frosty  air  she  felt  a  first  breath  of  spring,  birds  were  singing,  and 
even  beginning  to  build,  and  the  flood,  she  was  sure,  was  falling. 
But  when  next  day  she  reached  Rosemary  Villa,  the  gaunt 
drudge  informed  her  that  only  the  old  Flynts  were  in  1  Her 
heart  turned  to  lead.  So  he  had  not  stayed  in  for  her,  though 
she,  for  her  part,  had  raced  to  him  by  the  shortest  routes,  irrespec- 
tive of  business,  cutting  through  Chipstone  proper  by  a  single 
side-street.  It  was  not  till  she  had  learnt  that  he  was  gone,  like 
Elijah  and  aU  the  world,  to  Mr.  Mott's  funeral,  that  her  heart 
grew  light  again — she  seemed  to  batten  on  tragedies  these  days. 
Of  course  WiU  could  not  avoid  this  mark  of  respect,  he  who  had 
always  put  up  his  coach  in  the  courtyard  of  "  The  Black  Sheep," 
and  perhaps  she  ought  to  have  gone  to  the  funeral  too,  and 
would  probably  have  encountered  it  had  she  not  skipped  the 
High  Street  in  her  eagerness.  She  remembered  now  some 
lowered  blinds  in  the  street  she  had  scuttled  through,  and  a  slow 
booming  bell,  whose  disregarded  notes  now  at  last  donged  their 
message  to  her  brain.  But  perhaps  it  was  better  so — her 
redeemed  frock  was  too  gay,  her  winter  shawl  and  bonnet 
without  a  single  touch  of  black.  She  ought  to  have  borne  the 
inevitable  funeral  in  mind  though,  she  told  herself  reproachfully. 
In  her  present  guise  she  could  hardly  station  even  in  the  court- 
yard. It  was  fortunate  "  Mother  Gander  "  no  longer  expected 
to  see  her  within.  How  embarrassing  it  would  have  been  for 
the  widow  to  meet  the  confidante  of  her  unm.easured  denuncia- 
tions !  Probably  the  whole  place  would  be  closed  for  the  day, 
though  she  supposed  the  Chelmsford  coach  with  the  passengers 
from  liOndon  would  have  to  come  in  as  usual. 

Apprised  by  the  barking  of  Nip,  the  Flynt  couple  had  de- 
scended, looking  uneasy,  for  they  had  been  speaking  of  her  not 
long  before.  Their  hostess-drudge  had  started  the  ball  as  she 
closed  the  door  upon  Will,  outward  bound  for  the  funeral. 
"  You'd  think  he'd  found  a  fortune,  not  lost  one,"  the  melancholy 
creature  had  commented,  warmed  by  that  youthful  sunshine. 
"  I  reckon  he  wasn't  happy  hartin'  Jinny's  business,"  Caleb  had 
surmised.  "  And  to  be  happy  is  as  good  as  a  fortune."  Upon 
which  Martha,  who  was  equally  in  the  passage  "  to  see  Will  off," 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  511 

had  surprised  them  by  a  sudden  sob.  "  She's  thinkin'  of  that 
poor  drownded  young  man,"  Caleb  had  apologized,  leading  her 
gently  upstairs.  "  Oi  do  hope  Will'll  keep  a  proper  face  for  the 
funeral." 

That  appropriate  face,  however,  had  continued  to  be  Martha's, 
and  the  explanation  thereof  when  they  were  alone  had  surprised 
Caleb  more  than  the  sob. 

"  I  knew  she'd  rob  me  of  Will.  I  knew  it  from  the  first 
moment  she  wanted  to  read  his  letter  to  me." 

"  Rob  you  of  him  !  " 

"  They're  in  love.     Are  you  blind  ?  " 

"  You  don't  say !    Lord  !    Little  Jinny  !    Why,  she's  a  baiby !  " 

"  A  cunning  w^oman.  Came  after  him  even  when  you'd  have 
thought  he  was  safe  behind  the  flood  !  This  letter  w^ill  be  all 
that's  left  to  me  !     You  mark  my  w^ords  !  " 

"  Don't,  dear  heart.  You're  wettin'  the  letter— it'll  spile. 
But  dedn't  Oi  leave  my  mother  to  come  to  you,  as  the  Book 
commands  ?  " 

"  That's  different.  He's  all  I've  got.  I  can't  trust  him  to 
Jinny — she's  too  flighty — always  singing." 

''  Sow's  the  birds,  but  look  what  noice  nests  they  make  ! 
'Tain't  as  if  'twas  that  Purley  gal  as  Bundock  warned  us  of,  alius 
lookin'  at  herself  like  a  goose  in  a  pond.  We  ought  to  be  thankful 
as  Will's  showed  sow  much  sense.  There's  plenty  o'  good  farmers 
along  the  road,  but  there's  no  weeds  to  jinny  even  three  fields 
back." 

''  I  don't  wonder  you  go  kissing  her  !  Pity  you  can't  marry 
her  yourself  !  " 

"  Oi'd  have  no  chance  agin  Will's  looks,  dear  heart.  He 
takes  arter  his  mother,  ye  see." 

Dulcifying  as  this  jocose  finale  had  proved,  it  did  not  diminish 
the  awkwardness  of  now  meeting  Jinny,  but  Martha,  who  had 
not  even  the  consolation  of  finding  an  Ecclesia  fl.ourishing  in 
Chipstone,  was  anxious  to  hear  how  far  the  flood  had  subsided 
from  their  beloved  Frog  Farm.  They  were  both  experiencing 
all  the  pangs  of  exile,  aggravated  by  the  discomforts  of  a  house 
with  monotonously  boarded  fl^oors,  forbiddingly  fine  furniture, 
and  light  and  water  coming  unnaturally  out  of  taps,  and  their 
grievances  and  yearnings  for  a  return  to  reality  now  monopolized 
a  conversation  which  Jinny  strove  in  vain  to  divert  to  Will.  She 
was  reduced  to  looking  at  her  cart  for  indications  of  the  depths 


512  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

she  had  splashed  through  unobservantly,  and  could  extract 
nothing  about  Will  except  that  he  insisted  on  paying  for  their 
board  and  lodging,  and  that  this  would  surely  take  his  last  penny. 
"  He'll  have  to  look  far  a  job  now,  he'll  have  no  time  or  money 
to  think  of  foolishness,"  Martha  told  her  meaningly.  But  this 
broad  hint  conveyed  nothing  to  her.  In  her  affection  for  the 
old  woman  it  never  occurred  to  her  that  she  would  not  make  a 
welcome  daughter-in-law,  now  the  competition  was  over.  And 
knowing  as  a  scientific  fact  that  your  ears  burned  if  people  had  been 
talking  of  you — whereas  hers  had  been  tingling  with  the  frost — she 
went  away,  ail  unsuspicious,  in  quest  of  the  coveted  young  man. 

The  funeral  was  over  now,  she  saw  from  the  many  coaches 
returning  singly  or  in  procession  through  and  from  the  High 
Street.  Surely  the  grandest  funeral  ever  known  (she  thought), 
doubtless  out  of  consideration  for  so  tragic  a  passing,  though 
somewhat  confusing  to  the  moral  of  her  Spelling-Book.  Elijah, 
whom  she  met  changing  from  a  coach  into  his  trap,  confirmed 
her  impression  of  grandeur,  and  looked  forward — on  grounds  of 
special  information — to  the  toning  up  of  the  churchyard  with  a 
monument  as  big  as  money  could  buy,  surmounted  by  angels, 
"  not  weeping,  mind  you,  but  blowing  trumpets  like  Will's.'*" 
Elijah  wore  a  beautiful  new  top-hat,  flat-brimmed  and  funereally 
braided.  "Very  lucky  I  had  just  got  it  for  my  wedding,"  he 
confided  to  her. 

"  You  won't  forget  to  take  off  the  braid  ?  "  she  smiled.  "  And 
when  is  it  to  be  ?  " 

"  We're  having  the  banns  read  next  Sunday.  Blanche  won't 
wait  a  day  longer,  though  I'm  so  frightfully  busy  through  the 
flood — it's  a  regular  gold-stream." 

"  And  how's  Mr.  Flynt's  arm  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  He  won't  let  me  see  it  now — I  never  knew  such  an  obstinate 
pig.     He's  gone  to  Dr.  Mint." 

"  What,  just  now  ?  " 

"  No,  no,  he's  gone  home — to  Rosemary  Villa,  I  mean." 

As  soon  as  he  was  out  of  sight,  Jinny  turned  Methusalem's  head 
back  to  the  Villa.  She  hung  about  uncomfortably  for  some 
minutes  in  the  thought  that  Will  might  be  coming  along  or  would 
be  looking  out  of  a  window.  But  after  ten  unpleasant  minutes 
she  descended  from  her  seat  and  fumbled  shyly  with  the  new 
brass  knocker,  feeling  far  more  brazen  than  it.  She  almost 
cowered  before  the  upstanding  figure  of  the  septuagenarian  Mrs. 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  513 

Skindle — it  vaguely  reminded  her  of  Britannia  \\ith  a  broom — 
bur  stammering  out  that  she  had  forgotten  to  ask  if  the  Villa 
needed  anything,  she  ascertained  that  Will  had  not  returned. 
To  pitch  her  cart  at  the  door  was  impossible,  to  go  to  meet  him 
might  lead  to  missing  him,  so  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  des- 
perately to  prolong  the  conversation  till  he  should  reach  home. 
Her  tactics  proved  fatal,  for  her  cheerful  reference  to  Elijah" 
coming  marriage  loosed  upon  her  a  deluge  of  hysterical  tears, 
and  she  found  herself  the  confidante  of  sorrows  as  tragic  as  Mrs. 
Mott's.  Poor  Mrs.  Skindle,  throwing  herself  upon  this  sympa- 
thetic outsider,  so  providential  a  vent  for  her  surcharged  emotions, 
vociferated  that  all  her  children  had  abandoned  her,  that  she 
was  to  be  put  away  in  the  poorhouse.  In  vain  Jinny,  standing 
in  that  bleak  passage,  her  heart  astrain  for  Will's  coming,  strove 
to  assuage  a  grief  which  irritated  rather  than  touched  her.  She 
could  hardly  bring  her  mind  to  bear  upon  this  creature  with  the 
broom,  so  inopportune  and  irrelevant  did  the  outburst  seem,  so 
sordid  a  shadow  on  her  own  romance.  With  surface  words  she 
assured  the  poor  woman  that  all  this  was  only  in  her  imagination. 
But  Mrs.  Skindle,  though  admitting  she  had  only  divined  it, 
kept  iterating  that  a  nod  was  as  good  as  a  wink,  and  that  she 
wasn't  even  a  blind  horse.  Her  son  had  gone  to  see  Blanche  on 
the  Wednesday  and  had  come  back  with  the  announcement  of 
his  marriage  next  month,  and  Blanche  had  made  it  a  condition 
that  his  old  mother  should  be  put  away.  "  She'd  pison  me,  if 
she  wasn't  afraid  for  her  swan's  neck.  And  so  I've  got  to  be 
put  out  o'  sight.  'Tain't  as  if  I  can't  earn  m.y  bread  with  this 
broom  and  duster,  but  she's  too  grand  to  have  me  charin'  in 
Chipstone." 

"  Well,  then,  what  prevents  you  going  somewhere  else  ?  " 
Jinny  asked  impatiently. 

''  I  can't  go  traipsin'  about  to  new  places  and  new  faces  at  my 
age.  And  I  don't  want  to  go  agin  'Lijah  neither — he  ought  to 
ha'  been  married  long  since,  and  wasn't  it  me  spurred  him  on 
to  look  that  high  ?  And  won't  he  have  the  loveliest  wife  in 
Chipstone  ?  What's  your  game,  trying  to  drive  me  away  ? 
Why,  if  I  leave  Chipstone  I'd  never  see  my  grandchicks." 

"  Well,  but  would  you  see  them  anyhow,  even  supposing 
they're  hatched  ?  " 

"  I  reckon  there's  days  I'd  be  allowed  out  and  I  could  see  'em 
as  they  went  by  in  their  baby-cart." 

2  K 


514  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Well,  at  that  rate  you'd  be  happier  in  the  poorhouse." 

"  Yes,"   with   a   burst   of   weeping,    "  I'd   be   happier   there* 
Happen  I'd  better  go  there." 

"  But  I  don't  believe  your  son  will  let  you,"  Jinny  reassured 
her,  and  tore  herself  away,  miserably  conscious  of  a  sort  of 
Nemesis  for  her  strategic  lingering.  She  dismissed  the  scene  from 
her  mind.  But  it  added  to  the  heaviness  of  her  heart  as  she 
drove  slovvly  about  the  streets  with,  never  a  glimpse  of  the  face 
she  sought,  and  the  ache  of  his  absence  began  to  be  complicated 
by  the  fear  that  it  was  wilful,  or  at  least  not  unavoidable.  Surely 
it  was  not  possible  for  three  days  to  elapse  without  their  meeting, 
had  he  been  as  keen  as  she.  Even  the  funeral,  she  now  felt 
grimly,  was  not  an  absolute  necessity  of  life  !  He  could  have 
got  out  of  it.  No,  there  was  something  behind,  more  sinister 
than  funerals.  She  went  anxiously  over  her  one  brief  episode 
of  happiness.  Had  she  done  or  said  anything  to  offend  him  ? 
Was  it  that,  on  reflection,  he  had  resented  the  little  trick  she  had 
played  at  the  flooded  farm  in  luring  him  outside  his  door  ?  Yes, 
that  must  be  it.  And  she  had  sillily  rubbed  it  in  with  her  last 
words  :  "  You  bet  your  bottom  dollar  on  that !  "  But  no,  he 
could  hardly  be  resenting  the  innocent  device  without  which 
they  would  never  have  known  the  wonder  of  their  first  kiss.  The 
wonder  f  But  was  it  a  wonder  to  him  ?  Tumultuous  thoughts 
of  Blanche  and  more  shadowy  others  tore  at  her  bosom.  He  did 
not  really  care,  did  not  really  need  her. 

The  sport  of  elemental  passions,  she  drove  vaguely  around, 
hoping  against  hope  to  espy  him.  She  was  a  creature  of  pure 
feeling — unsophisticated  by  fiction  or  drama — and  darkling 
images  of  death  came  to  her  for  the  first  time.  And  for  the  first 
time  she  let  her  work  go  undone.  It  was  no  mere  apprehension 
of  meeting  "  Mother  Gander "  that  finally  kept  her  from  the 
courtyard  of  the  inn,  no  mere  sense  that  with  the  sweeping 
away  of  competition  she  could  afford  to  neglect  for  once  even 
the  commissions  she  already  held  ;  it  was  the  absolute  distraction 
of  her  mind.  She  could  have  borne  final  separation  more  easily 
than  this  uncertainty. 

As  she  jogged  home,  she  realized  miserably  that  Will  had  at 
last  succeeded  in  stamping  out  her  business,  if  only  for  a  day. 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  515 

IV 

But  on  her  way  to  church  on  the  Sunday — thanksgiving  was 
clearly  due  for  her  restored  fortunes  and  the  fast-falHng  flood — 
all  her  misery,  which  his  Saturday  silence  had  only  intensified, 
melted  away  in  a  moment  at  the  sound  of  his  voice  and  the  sight 
of  his  sling.  To  add  to  her  rapture  came  the  thought  that,  a 
turning  later,  she  would  have  encountered  Miss  Gentry  !  But  his 
exclamation;  "Why,  whatever  became  of  you,  Jinny?  It's 
been  heU  !  "  radiated  so  much  heaven  that  the  closing  of  his  lips 
upon  hers  was  almost  a  retrogression,  perturbed  as  it  was  by  her 
shyness  in  the  open  air.  And,  of  course,  she  ought  to  have  gone 
to  the  inn-yard  where  he  had  been  waiting,  she  saw  the  moment 
he  began  explaining ;  that  was  the  natural  station  for  her  cart  to 
have  come  to.  "  Do  forgive  me  making  you  suffer  so,"  she  pleaded. 
"  But  I  didn't  like  to  go  in,  with  Mrs.  Mott  in  that  state  !  " 

But  Mrs.  Mott  had  not  been  "  in  that  state  "  he  corrected 
almost  laughingly.  On  the  contrary,  with  her  usual  unexpected- 
ness and  extremism,  she  had  reopened  the  bar  immediately  and 
served  there  herself  in  her  handsomest  dress,  with  the  gold  chain 
heaving  once  more  on  the  bereaved  bosom.  Will  himself  had 
been  forced  to  clink  glasses  with  her.  "  He  wouldn't  have  liked 
to  see  us  gloomy — ^like  them  Peculiars,"  she  had  said.  "  He  was 
always  one  for  jollity  and  life." 

The  anecdote  enhanced  the  lovers'  own  joy  of  life,  and  though 
Jinny  steered  for  church  (if  by  a  2dgzag  path  to  avoid  other 
worshippers)  they  never  got  out  of  the  fir-grove,  where  a  tree 
sapped  by  the  flood  presented  a  comparatively  dry  seat  amid 
the  sodden  gull-haunted  ways.  Perhaps  it  was  the  thrushes  that 
encouraged  them — despite  the  dankness — to  "stick  to  it,  stick 
to  it."  It  was  certainly  more  comfortable  for  kissing.  Jinny  shame- 
lessly confessed,  snuggUng  into  the  cloak  he  had  bought  to  cover 
his  sling.  "  When  we  stand  up,  you're  too  proud  to  stoop,"  she 
laughed  blissfully.     "  You  make  me  crane  my  neck  up." 

"  That's  only  through  the  sling,"  he  apologized. 

"  Never  mind — ^you're  not  such  a  Goliath — nothing  so  tall  as 
Elijah!" 

His  eyes  blazed  fiercely.     "  Why,"  she  laughed,  "  you  don' 
mind  not  being  tall  ?  " 

"  Of  course  not,"  he  said  mendaciously.     "  Only  you  haven' 
been  measuring  yourself  against  Elijah,  I  hope." 


Si6  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Measuring  myself- — ?  "  she  began,  puzzled.  Then  her  silvery 
laugh  rippled  out.  "  Oh,  you  jealous  goose  !  But  his  size'll  be  a 
bit  awkward  for  Blanche,  won't  it  ?  "  Then  a  sudden  memory 
flushed  both  their  faces,  and  hastily  drawing  a  copy  of  the 
Chelmsford  Chronicle  from  his  pocket,  he  directed  her  attention 
to  the  thrilling  accounts  of  the  great  flood  and  the  greater  funeral, 
and  her  fitful  attempts  to  peruse  them  constituted  the  only 
rational  moments  of  the  morning. 

It  was  odd  how  the  reflection  of  events  in  the  mighty  Essex 
organ  seemed  to  redouble  their  importance,  and  how  even  Will 
swelled  in  Jinny's  eyes  when  she  saw  him  catalogued  among 
"  leading  citizens  "  present  at  "  the  last  obsequies  of  the  popular 
proprietor  of  '  The  Black  Sheep.'  "  And  if  Will  failed  to  loom 
as  large  as  Charley — whose  death,  fortunate  in  its  journalistic 
opportunity,  instead  of  being  swamped  by  the  flood,  came  as 
its  climax — nevertheless  he  appeared  in  print  no  fewer  than  three 
times.  The  second  occasion  was  the  destruction  of  "  The  Flynt 
Flyer,"  and  this  obituary  was  so  long  and  complimentary  that 
it  almost  made  amends  for  his  loss,  even  though  he  knew  the 
details  to  be  highly  imaginative.  In  the  third  notice  he  owed 
his  eminence  to  his  father,  who.  Jinny  learned  with  surprise,  had 
been  the  beneficiary  of  a  miracle.  "  Among  the  most  singular 
of  the  effects  produced  by  the  Bradmarsh  floods,"  ran  the  para- 
graph that  drew  Caleb  from  the  long  obscurity  of  his  seventy 
winters  and  v/hich  was  as  prolix  and  breathless  as  a  sentence  of 
Mrs.  Purley's,  "  may  be  cited  the  fact  of  a  small  cornstack  some 
four  yards  long,  recognized  by  a  shepherd  named  Peartree  as 
belonging  to  Mr.  Caleb  Flynt,  of  Frog  Farm,  father  of  Mr.  William 
Flynt,  the  lamentable  destruction  of  whose  coach  and  horses 
under  sensational  circumstances  is  recorded  in  another  column, 
having  been  lifted  from  its  place  by  the  waters  that  so  suddenly 
burst  upon  this  remote  homestead  ;  and,  after  floating  about 
at  their  mercy,  like  a  dismasted  and  rudderless  ship,  being 
deposited  in  safety  in  a  higher  field,  wholly  uninjured,  save  by 
the  wet — in  as  firm  and  compact  a  condition  as  before  the  flood — 
and,  apparently,  without  a  single  blade  of  straw  in  its  body  or 
its  roof  having  been  disturbed  from  its  relative  position,  while 
other  stacks  in  the  same  field,  belonging  to  his  former  employer, 
Farmer  Gale,  were  almost  totally  ruined." 

"  Oh,  Will,  I'm  so  glad,"  said  Jinny.  "  I  don't  mean  about 
Farmer  Gale." 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  517 

"  I  do.  Mean  hunks  !  Think  what  he  paid  dad  all  those 
years.  But  is  it  true  about  our  stack,  I  wonder.  Papers  aren't 
always  correct." 

"  Aren't  they  ?  "     She  nestled  closer. 

"  Oh  dear  no.  You  should  have  been  in  America  !  Haven't 
you  noticed  it  says  Elijah  rescued  us  ?  Such  a  mix-up  with  his 
housing  us.  That's  v/hy  I  didn't  tell  poor  old  dad  till  I  could 
run  up  and  see  for  myself." 

She  moved  back.     "  Oh,  is  that  what  you  came  for  ?  " 

'^  Of  course  not,  darling.  But  being  here,  I  may  as  well  have 
a  look." 

"  Well,  you'll  be  able  to,  w^hile  I'm  at  church.  I  suppose  you 
wouldn't  come,"  she  added  shyly. 

"Church?"  he  laughed.  "Why,  it's  nearly  over!"  He 
pointed  to  a  pale,  struggling  sun  that  had  well  passed  its  zenith. 


Mr.  Fallow  was,  in  fact,  just  at  his  Fifthly  and  Finally,  with 
Nip  for  sole  representative  of  Blackwater  Hall.  That  faithful 
congregant,  discovering  that  Jinny  had  dodged  him  as  usual, 
had  set  out  for  church  forthwith,  and  was  utterly  disconcerted 
to  find  her  pew  vacant.  It  was  noted,  however,  that  he  remained 
awake  during  the  sermon,  pricking  up  his  ears  at  the  recurrent 
w^ord  "  Methuselah,"  which  no  doubt  sounded  to  him  like  his 
old  companion's  name.  Mr.  Fallow's  timely  sermon  on  Noah's 
Flood  proved  no  less  rousing  to  the  human  hearers,  though  it 
began  unpromisingly  with  the  text :  "  And  all  the  days  of 
Methuselah  were  nine  hundred  sixty  and  nine  years  ;  and  he 
died."  But  Miss  Gentry,  already  ruffled  by  Jinny's  absence, 
wondered  why  so  much  honour  should  be  done  to  Mr.  Bundock 
"  Why  preach  a  sermon  against  a  postman  ?  "  she  asked  Jinny 
afterwards. 

The  fact  was,  of  course,  that  those  "  sceptical  sophisms  "  which 
Mr.  Fallow  took  the  opportunity  to  traverse  and  confute  came 
from  "  The  Age  of  Reason,"  but  as  Miss  Gentry  had  heard  them 
only  from  Bundock,  she  did  not  know  they  were  inspired  by  Tom 
Paine.  At  any  rate  it  was  satisfactory  to  have  them  demolished 
and  the  veracity  of  the  Bible  vindicated  by  the  very  arithmetical 
tests  with  which  the  atheists  juggled.  They  had  "  set  the  story 
of  Noah  and  his  ark  as  on  a  level  with  the  "  Arabian  Nights  " 


5i8  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

and  the  ages  of  the  Patriarchs  as  no  less  fabulous  than  the 
immortality  of  the  giants  of  mythology."  Well,  but  here  was 
the  text,  Mr.  Fallow  thundered  :  "  And  all  the  days  of  Methu- 
selah were  nine  hundred  sixty  and  nine  years  ;  and  he  died." 
A  statement  splendidly  bare— bare  as  Truth  alone  could  afford 
to  be.  But  let  them  follow  it,  these  dear  brethren  and  sisters, 
into  all  its  ramifications,  trace  the  scattered  threads  of  chronology 
and  exhibit  their  marvellous  congruity.  Noah's  grandfather 
lived  nine  hundred  sixty  and  nine  years  ;  and  he  died.  But 
at  the  age  of  187  he  had  begotten  Lamech,  and  at  the  age  of  182 
Lamech  had  begotten  Noah.  Methusel'ah  was  then  just  369 
years  old  when  the  hero  of  the  Flood  was  born.  And  the  Flood 
came,  we  were  told  in  a  later  chapter,  in  the  six  hundredth  year 
of  Noah's  life  ;  600  added  to  369  made  969.  "  And  all  the  days 
of  Methuselah  were  nine  hundred  sixty  and  nine  years  ;  and  he 
died."  Had  the  figures  made  970,  the  Bible  would  have  indeed 
ceased  to  be  the  infallible  Word  of  God,  and  atheism  could 
have  crowed,  unanswered.  For  Methuselah  was  not  in  the  ark ; 
and  every  living  creature  outside  was  destroyed  from  the 
earth  ! 

Whether  he  himself  perished  in  the  Flood,  or  whether — as  the 
preacher  preferred  to  believe,  the  aged  patriarch  had  been 
removed — ^like  his  father  Enoch  before  him — from  the  evil  to 
come,  was  a  minor  issue  compared  with  the  glorious  certainty 
that  369  added  to  600  made  969  and  not  970.  Had  Lamech  or 
Noah  been  begotten  one  year  later,  or  the  Flood  recorded  as  one 
year  earlier,  what  a  catastrophe  for  mankind  !  How  the  sophists 
would  have  gloated  over  their  perverse  arithmetic  !  Happily 
such  discrepancies  were  the  mere  dream  of  the  impious.  "  And 
all  the  days  of  Methuselah  were  nine  hundred  sixty  and  nine 
years  ;   and  he  died." 

Nip  refused  to  sit  through  the  prayer  for  sceptics  that  followed. 
With  the  cessation  of  the  word  "  Methuselah "  his  interest 
waned,  and  the  dismal  conviction  overcame  him  that  Jinny  had 
gone  back  to  the  chapel.  Tearing  off  at  a  great  rate,  he  soon, 
however,  scented  the  truants  homing  across  the  Common. 

"  Why,  where  have  you  been  ?  "  said  his  mistress,  as  if  he  were 
the  sinner  ! 

But  his  raptures  at  seeing  united  at  last  the  twain  he  had  don€ 
so  much  to  bring  together,  served  to  suspend  a  debate  that  had 
brought  the  first  cloud  on  the  morning's  happiness.     Having  to 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  519 

walk  smartly  to  Blackvvater  Hall  with  no  time  for  dalliance,  they 
had  come  at  last  to  a  serious  talk  about  their  plans,  and  it 
transpired  that  Will's  mind  was  playing  about  the  new  Australian 
goldflelds.  He  seemed  dangerously  in  the  grip  of  the  "  yellow- 
fever,''  which,  spreading  from  a  Mr.  Hargreaves  and  Summer 
Hill  Creek,  had  circled  the  world  in  less  than  nine  months.  He 
recited  to  Jinny  the  legends  of  the  new  diggings,  the  quartz  that 
was  three-fourths  gold,  the  aureous  streams,  the  nuggets  the  size- 
of  melons.  When  he  spoke  of  purchasing  shovels  and  blanketvS, 
it  was  not,  alas,  for  their  joint  home,  nor  were  the  "  cradles  "  of 
his  conversation  indelicately  domestic.  How  could  he  talk  of 
going  away,  she  asked,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  when  they  had 
only  just  got  to  know  each  other  ?  Well,  of  course,  he  didn't 
mean  to-morrow,  with  his  arm  like  that !  She  needn't  begin  to 
cry  yet,  but  obviously  this  hidebound  old  England  was  no  place 
for  a  man  without  capital.  Did  she  expect  him  to  become  a  farm- 
hand to  Farmer  Gale  ?  Of  course  he  could  go  on  shearing  sheep 
and  doing  odd  jobs  and  sink  into  a  Ravens,  always  singing,  with 
nothing  to  sing  about  1  But  if  they  were  to  marry,  he  must  find 
a  decent  livelihood.  Hard,  irrefutable  truths  !  If  only — she 
thought — they  had  both  been  less  silly  while  he  still  had  his 
coach  and  horses  !  Impossible  to  suggest  to  a  man  like  Will 
that  she  might  manage  to  earn  enough  for  him  as  well  as  for  her 
grandfather  1  Of  course  if  he  had  lost  his  arm  altogether — but 
that  was  too  wicked  a  speculation  to  gloat  over  !  Had  Methusalem 
been  younger  and  stronger,  the  cart  might  perhaps  have  taken 
on  extra  rounds,  with  Will  in  command.  But  even  that  would 
probably  have  jarred  his  pride.  No,  he  was  a  ruined  man,  and 
adventure — as  he  truly  urged — was  his  only  chance.  And  yet 
she  clung  tighter  to  his  one  good  arm,  glad  of  the  respite  the 
other  had  given  her,  and  hoping  "that  the  Angel-Mother  would 
somehow  intervene  to  keep  him  in  the  country — if  not  the 
county — she  hovered  over.  Sufficient  for  the  day  was  the  good 
thereof;  here  was  Will,  and  Nip,  and  the  Sunday  pie  in  the 
oven — the  first  good  dinner  since  Christmas,  the  preparation  of 
which  for  her  lip-smacking  elder  had  served  to  keep  her  sane 
during  those  days  of  torturing  suspense.  How  glad  she  was  the 
meal  would  be  worthy  of  their  visitor  ! 

x\  faint  uneasiness  did  indeed  begin  to  creep  under  her  happi- 
ness as  they  crossed  the  rutted  road  that  divided  the  Common 
from  her  gate,  but  she  was  hardly  conscious  what  it  was,  vaguely 


520  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

putting  it  down  to  Nip's  dangerous  attempts  to  caress  them 
with  his  muddy  paws. 

"  Here  we  are  !  "  she  cried  gaily.  "  Lucky  Gran'fer  never  asks 
about  the  sermon." 

He  drew  her  to  him.  Hurriedly  ascertaining  that  there  was 
no  eye  or  telescope  bearing  upon  her,  she  submitted  to  the  long 
ardour  of  his  kiss.     Then  she  drew  him  in  turn  towards  the  gate. 

"  But  I've  kissed  you  good-bye,"  he  said. 

"  Good-bye  ?  "  she  repeated  blankly.  "  Aren't  vou  coming 
in  ?  "  ,  ' 

"  How  can  I  come  in  ?  " 

Even  then  she  hardly  realized  the  situation.  Foreseen  as  it 
had  long  been,  it  had  so  softened  in  her  own  mind — especially 
after  her  comparative  success  in  soothing  down  her  grandfather — 
that  she  did  not  realize  it  remained  in  Will's  in  all  its  original 
crudity.  "  You're  not  thinking  of  that  nonsense  1  "  she  said, 
smiling.  '*  We'll  just  lift  up  the  latch  and  v/alk  in  !  Won't 
Gran'fer  be  surprised  ?  "     But  her  smile  was  uneasy. 

"  You've  forgotten,  Jinny,  he  won't  have  me  over  his  door- 
step." 

"  Oh,  is  that  the  reason  you  didn't  come  all  the  w^eek  ?  "  The 
greyness  creeping  beneath  her  happiness  began  to  spread  out 
like  a  clammy  fog. 

"  Well,  how  could  I  have  got  to  you  ?  I  couldn't  stand  about 
the  Common  in  the  wind  and  rain  on  the  chance  you  might 
catch  sight  of  me." 

"  I'd  have  stood  about  for  you,"  she  said  simply. 

"  And  didn't  I  stand  about  at  '  The  Black  Sheep  '  ?  " 

"  Yes,  that  was  my  fault,  sweetheart.  But  anyhow  we  won't 
stand  about  here."  And  she  tugged  at  his  arm.  "  Where  else 
could  you  have  dinner  ?  " 

"  I  can  get  some  at  '  The  King  of  Prussia.'  I'll  be  just  in 
time  if  I  go  now." 

"  You  desert  me  to  get  dinner  !  " 

"  You  know  that's  nonsense,  dearest,  considering  I  could  get 
both  if  I  came  in." 

"  Then  why  don't  you  come  in  ?  " 

"  You  know  I  can't." 

"  Because  of  those  few  high  words  ?     How  absurd  !  " 

"  We  won't  go  into  that  now." 

"  Yes,  we  will.     You  don't  want  to  eat  humble  pie.     But  it 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  521 

isn't  humble  pie,"  she  laughed,  with  a  desperate  attempt  at 
merriment,  "  it's  steak  and  kidney  pie  !     So  there  !  " 

"  But,  Jinny,  he  forbade  me  to  cross  his  sill  !  " 

"  You  old  goose  !  He  never  thought  we'd  cross  it  arm  in  arm. 
Like  this  !  Come  along — won't  he  open  his  eyes  and  wipe  his 
spectacles  !  " 

He  shook  off  her  arm.  "  It's  no  laughing  matter,  Jinny.  An 
oath  is  an  oath." 

"  An  oath !  "  she  repeated  dully.  The  violence  of  that 
grotesque  collision  had  blurred  her  memory  of  its  minutiae. 

"  You  can't  have  forgotten  ?  He  laid  his  hand  on  the  Bible — 
he  vowed  to  the  Almighty  I  should  never  cross  your  threshold." 

She  essayed  a  last  jaunty  smile.  "  Unless  on  your  hands  and 
knees.     Don't  forget  that  part." 

"  Is  it  likely  I  could  forget  such  an  insult  ?  " 

"  Well  then,  that's  all  right !  "  Her  smile  became  braver. 
"  We'll  crawl  in  together,  two  little  babies.  Come  along,  petsy." 
And  she  stooped  down  comically. 

"  How  can  you  be  so  childish,  Jinny  ?  " 

"  Isn't  it  all  childish  r     Down  you  go,  WiUie  !  " 

But  he  stiffened  himself  physically  as  well  as  morally.  "  Give 
in  to  such  a  humiliation  ?  " 

"  You  won't  really  be  giving  in,"  she  said,  with  a  happy  thought. 
"  With  only  one  arm,  you  can  only  come  in  on  your  hand  and 
knees.  So  you'll  outwit  him  after  all.  Come  along,  poor  little 
lopsided  creature,  Jinny'll  help  you — and  Gran'fer  will  forget  to 
count  your  limbs,  my  poor  brave  boy  !  " 

"  It's  you  that  are  forgetting,"  he  said  harshly.  "  It's 
impossible." 

"  What's  impossible  ?  " 

"  That  I  should  crawl  to  your  grandfather." 

"  I  see  !     It's  your  pride  you  love,  not  me." 

"  No,  it  isn't." 

"  Yes,  it  is."  She  snatched  her  hand  from  his.  "  Nothing 
can  bring  you  to  your  knees." 

"  It's  not  true.  I'd  go  on  my  hands  and  knees  to  you,  as  if  I 
was  in  chapel,  and  I'd  crawl  on  'em  across  your  threshold  and 
thank  God  for  what  laid  on  t'other  side — but  you  see,  Jinny, 
what  breaks  me  up  is  that  /  made  a  vow  too." 

"  You  ?  " 

"  You  don't  seem-  to  remember  anything." 


522  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  I  dare  say  I  was  a  bit  dazed  at  all  the  silliness.  But  if  you 
swore  too  not  to  cross  our  threshold,  why,  I'll  go  and  let  you  in 
by  the  lattice.  And  perhaps  Gran'fer  will  be  that  tickled,  he'll 
laugh  and  forget  about  his  cranky  old  oath.  Or  perhaps  he'll 
reckon  you  kave  scrambled  in  on  your  hands  and  knees.  Oh 
dear,  isn't  it  funny  ?  See  you  in  a  moment,  Will."  She  put 
her  hand  on  the  latch  of  the  gate. 

He  shook  his  head.     "  Neither  by  door  nor  by  window." 

"  Didn't  I  say  I'd  never  cross  your  doorstep  ?  "  she  urged. 
"  And  yet  I  came." 

"  You  came  through  the  window." 

"  Well,  I'll  come  by  the  door.  There  !  That's  a  fair  offer. 
I'm  not  going  to  stick  to  silliness — when  it's  so  silly  1  " 

"  All  very  well,"  he  said  coldly.  "  But  you  know^  you  can't 
get  through  my  door." 

"  Goodness  gracious  !     Have  I  grown  so  fat  ?  " 

"  Don't  pretend.  You  know  it's  the  flood.  Besides,  it 
wouldn't  be  any  good  my  going  through  the  window.  What  I 
said  when  I  raised  my  hand  to  heaven  was  that  your  grandfather 
should  never  see  me  in  his  house !  " 

"  Just  what  /  said — I  remember  now^,"  she  interrupted.  "  I 
said  you'd  never  see  me  in  Frog  Farm.  And  yet  you  did — and 
lost  your  bet  too."  Her  face  was  gay  again.  "  So  I  gave  in 
first,  you  see,  sweetheart,  and  now  you've  got  to  play  fair." 

"  You  don't  listen — you  cut  into  my  words.  What  I  swore 
was  that  your  g];andfather  should  never  see  me  in  his  house 
unless  he  carried  me  in  !  " 

Her  gaiety  grew  hysterical.  "  Ha,  ha,  ha  !  "  she  laughed. 
"  Grandfather's  given  up  carrying  ages  ago.  I'm  his  deputy 
now.  Oh  dear  !  "  She  measured  him  with  a  rueful  eye.  "  Well, 
I  can  but  try  1  "     And  she  put  her  arms  round  his  hips. 

"  Don't  make  light  of  an  oath.  Jinny."  He  pushed  her  off 
with  his  left  hand. 

"  'Twas  you  that  made  light  of  an  oath — taking  the  Lord's 
name  over  trifles." 

*'  I  never  took  the  Lord's  name,"  he  said  sullenly.  '^  I  only 
lifted  my  hand." 

"  Well,  you  can't  lift  it  now — and  serve  you  right !  You 
surely  never  expected  Gran'fer  to  lug  a  sulky  lout  over  his 
doorstep." 

"  Of  course  not.     I  never  expected  I'd  zvant  to  cross  it.     Why, 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  523 

Jinny,  though  you  were  there  in  the  room,  I  was  that  blind !  " 

And  his  hand  sought  hers  again. 

"  Leave  me  alone  !  "  she  cried.  "  You  and  your  miserable 
vows  !  '' 

"  I'd  cut  my  tongue  out  if  I  could  unsay  the  words." 

"  You  can  unsay  'em  more  easily  with  your  tongue  in." 

"  A  man  can't  go  back  on  his  sworn  word.  Women  don't 
understand." 

"  So  you  said  about  horses.  And  nicely  you  managed  yours  ! 
Oh,  forgive  me,  I  didn't  mean  to  crow.  That  was  your  misfor- 
tune. But  this  is  your  fault.  It's  your  pride  you're  in  love 
with,  not  me.  Good-bye ;  Gran'fer  will  be  starving."  She  lifted 
the  gate-latch  angrily. 

"  But  only  good-bye  for  the  moment,"  he  pleaded.  "  I  can't 
cross  your  threshold,  but  you  can  cross  mxine." 

She  answered  more  gently,  but  her  tone  was  tired  and  helpless. 
*'  And  what  would  be  the  good,  unless  you  and  Gran'fer  make 
it  up  ?  " 

"  I'm  not  marrying  your  grandfather  !  " 

Something  patronizing  in  the  sentence  jarred  afresh.  "  You'd 
better  go  back  to  Blanche — it'll  be  too  late  soon." 

"  I  wouldn't  touch  Blanche  with  Bidlake's  barge-pole  !  " 

The  magnificence  of  the  repudiation  had  its  effect — it  swamped 
in  both  the  recollection  that  it  was  Blanche  who  had  done  the 
refusing. 

"  You  don't  expect  me  to  give  up  Gran'fer  at  his  age  ?  "  she 
said  more  mildly. 

"  We'll  get  him  a  minder — when  I  come  back  from  Australia  !  " 

Australia  put  the  climax  to  her  weariness.  "  Oh,  yes,  I  don't 
wonder  it's  so  easy  for  you  to  go." 

"  It  isn't  easy  for  me  to  go,  even  as  far  as  Chipstone,"  he 
protested  passionately.  "  But  it's  your  grandfather  you  love, 
not  me." 

"  I  love  you  both.  Only  think  how  old  he  is.  It's  like 
quarrelling  with  a  child.  And  he  is  in  his  second  childhood 
almost,  though  I  wouldn't  say  it  to  anybody  else.  There  are 
times  when  he  seems  quite  his  old  self,  wonderfully  strong  and 
sensible,  but  there  are  moments  when  he  quite  frightens  me.  He 
can't  bear  to  be  crossed,  and  he  forgets  almost  everything  that 
happens  nowadays." 

"  Then  perhaps  he's  forgotten  our  upset  !  " 


524  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  No,  that's  the  unfortunate  part.  But  we  must  just  make  a 
little  joke  of  it.  Down  on  your  marrow-bones,  Willie  !  "  And 
she  laid  her  hand  on  his  shoulder  with  a  last  sprightly  effort. 

But  even  as  his  shoulder  subsided,  it  swelled  up  again,  like  a 
pressed  gutta-percha  ball.  "  It's  all  grandfather  with  you,  your 
husband  doesn't  count." 

''  Husband,  indeed  !  "  She  withdrew  her  hand  as  if  stung. 
"  You're  going  quicker  than  your  coach  ever  went." 

"  Oh,  very  well — I'm  off  to  AustraHa  !  " 

"  As  you  please.     I'll  call  for  your  box  !  " 

"  I'll  have  no  truck  with  a  cart  of  yours." 

"  There's  no  other  way  of  getting  things  to  Chipstone,"  she 
reminded  him  blandly. 

"  I'll  shoulder  it  sooner,"  he  burst  forth. 

"  Ah,  then  you  won't  be  going  just  yet  !  " 

^"  Damn  my  arm  !  I'll  not  stay  in  this  wretched  country 
another  fortnight !     I'll  never  look  on  your  face  again." 

She  began  humming :  ''A  dashing  young  man  from 
Canada !  " 

His  face  grew  black  with  anger,  and  he  strode  away  even 
before  she  had  passed  through  the  gate. 


VI 

Righteous  resentment  saved  Jinny  from  the  collapse  of  the 
previous  week.  That  dreadful  gnawing  of  uncertainty  was  over. 
Whatever  she  had  said,  she  was  sure  now  that  he  did  love  her, 
even  if  she  came  second  to  his  pride.  That  a  way  out  of  their 
difficulties  would  soon  present  itself  to  her  nimble  brain  she  did 
not  doubt :  her  one  fear  was  that  he  would  find  the  way  to 
Australia  first,  and  it  was  a  comfort  to  remem.ber  his  helpless 
arm  and  his  empty  purse — "  no  money  to  think  of  foolishness," 
as  his  dear  old  mother  had  put  it.  Already  on  the  Tuesday 
after  the  unheard  sermon,  she  found  a  means  of  communicating 
with  him  without  a  lowering  of  her  own  proper  pride.  For  the 
fourteenth  of  the  month  was  nigh  upon  them,  and  the  shops — 
even  apart  from  the  stationer's — -were  ablaze  with  valentines,  a 
few  sentimental,  but  the  overwhelming  majority  grotesque  and 
flamboyant,  the  British  version  of  Carnival.  After  long  search 
she  discovered  a  caricature  that  not  only  resembled  Will  in 
having  carroty  locks,  but  carried  in  its  motto  sufficient  allusive- 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  525 

ness  to  the  quarrel  with  her  grandfather  to  make  it  clear  the 
overture  came  from  her.  Not  that  the  overture  looked  con- 
ciliatory to  the  superficial  eye.  Quite  the  contrary.  For  apart 
from  the  ugliness  of  the  visage,  the  legend  ran  : 

To  such  a  man  Fd  never  pledge  my  troth, 
Fd  sooner  die,  I  take  my  Bible  oath. 

Not  a  very  refined  couplet  or  procedure  perhaps,  but  Jinny 
was  never  a  drawing-room  heroine,  and  the  valentine  was  dear 
to  the  great  heart  of  the  Victorian  people.  Besides,  do  not  the 
grandest  dames  relax  at  Carnival  ? 

Jinny  half  expected  a  similar  insult  from  Will  by  the  same 
post,  and  though  St.  Valentine's  Day  passed  without  bringing 
her  one,  she  still  expected  a  retort  in  kind  the  day  after.  And 
when  Bundock  appeared  with  a  voluminous  letter,  directed 
simply  to  "  Jinny  the  Carrier,  Little  Bradmarsh,  England,"  her 
disappointment  at  Mr.  Flippance's  flabby  handwriting  was  acute, 
though  otherwise  she  w^ould  have  been  excited,  not  only  by  his 
letter,  but  by  the  foreign  stamp,  the  first  she  had  ever  received. 
"  So  he's  still  in  Boulogne,"  Bundock  observed  casually,  lingering 
to  pick  up  the  contents.  "  I  hope  he's  sending  you  the  money 
to  pay  Mrs.  Purley." 

"  Why  should  he  send  it  through  me  ?  "  she  said  sharply. 

"  Well,  since  he's  writing  to  you,  it  would  save  stamps,  wouldn't 
it  ?  I  do  think  it  was  rough  on  Mrs.  Purley,  though,  a  wedding 
breakfast  like  that,  though  I  expect  he  bought  his  own  cham- 
pagne— and  clinking  stuff  it  was,  nigh  as  good  as  the  sherry  at 
poor  Charley's  funeral.  However,  she's  marrying  her  own 
daughter  now — Mrs.  Purley,  I  mean — and  lucky  she  is  too  to 
have  escaped  young  Flynt,  who  is  off  to  Australia  without  a 
penny — looks  to  me  almost  as  if  they're  hurrying  on  the  marriage 
so  that  Will  m.ay  be  best  man  before  he  goes,  he  and  'Lijah  are 
that  thick !  He,  he,  he !  Funny  world,  ain't  it  ?  You've 
heard  my  riddle  perhaps — Why  are  marriages  never  a  success  ? 
Because  the  bride  never  marries  the  best  man  !  He,  he  !  Well, 
she  came  near  doing  it  this  time — he,  he,  he  !  Though  whether 
she's  the  best  woman  for  either  of  'em  is  a  question." 

"  That's  their  own  business,"  Jinny  managed  to  put  in. 

"  So  'tis,  but  with  'Lijah  a  member  of  the  Chipstone  Temper- 
ance Friendly  Society,  he'll  hardly  like  a  wife  who  washes  her 
head  in  beer." 


526  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  What  nonsense  !     How  can  you  know  that  ?  " 

"  Fact.  It's  to  make  her  hair  wavy.  There's  nothing  her 
brother  Barnaby  don't  let  out  to  my  poor  old  dad.  She  was  at 
it  the  day  you  ail  came  to  the  Farm.  It  wasn't  that  she  had  her 
bodice  oif  and  her  hair  down  after  the  douche," — Bundock 
seemed  to  savour  these  details — "  she  didn't  want  him  to 
=;mell  it." 

"  Well,  you  seem  to  smell  out  everything,"  she  said  severely. 

"  I  do  have  a  nose  like  Nip's  1  "  he  chuckled.  But  although 
Mr.  Flippance's  letter  was  under  it,  he  was  forced  to  go  oif 
without  even  discovering  that  it  did  contain  a  Financial  document. 
Very  amazed  indeed  was  Jinny  to  see  it  drop  out,  this  lOU, 
which  was  for  herself  and  not  Mrs.  Purley,  and  represented  half 
a  crown  !  Retiring  to  her  kitchen,  she  studied  the  large-scrawled 
pages. 

"  My  dear  Jinny, — I  have  just  read  in  Madame  F.'s  copy  of 
her  London  Journal  (which  like  Mrs.  Micawber  she  will  never 
desert,  at  least  not  till  the  present  serial  is  finished)  an  extract 
from  the  Chelmsford  Chronicle  about  the  miraculous  saving  of 
a  cornstack  belonging  to  our  mutual  friend,  Mr.  Caleb  Flynt. 

"  I  gather  that  a  flood  must  have  devastated  Little  Brad- 
marsh,  and  I  write  at  once  to  know  if  all  my  friends  are  safe, 
especially  your  charming  little  self.  Strange  to  think  that 
the  parlour  in  which  I  breakfasted  on  bacon  and  mushrooms 
in  your  sweet  society  m^y  have  been  washed  away  !  But 
such  is  life — a  shadow-pantomime  ! 

"  We  are  still  at  Boulogne,  you  see.  For  one  thing — to  speak 
frankly — it's  a  providential  place  to  be  at  when  funds  are  for 
the  moment  low,  and  it  appears  that  Madame  F.'s  fortune — all 
that  the  villain  Duke  left  of  it — is  in  Spanish  bonds.  I  need 
say  no  more.  (I  think  I  told  you  she  was  the  niece  of  the 
famous  Cairo  Contortionist,  and  doubtless  it  was  during  the 
star's  sensationally  successful  season  at  Madrid  that  she  was 
thus  misled.)  The  wily  master  of  marionettes  must  have  been 
aware  of  this  when  he  got  ["  her  oif  his  hands  "  appeared 
quite  legibly  here,  though  scratched  out  with  heavy  strokes] 
back  his  show  over  her  head. 

"  Our  present  plans  are,  before  attempting  London  (which 
though  almost  barren  of  talent  calls  for  overmuch  of  the  ready), 
to  launch  an  .English  season  in  Boulogne  itself,  where  there  is 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  527 

such  a  large  English  circle,  that  saves  so  much  by  being  here 
immune  from  sheriff's  officers  that  it  can  well  afford  the 
luxury  of  the  theatre,  not  to  mention  the  many  French  people 
here  who  must  be  anxious  to  learn  English,  especially  after 
their  visit  to  the  Great  Exhibition. 

"  Between  you  and  I,  I  fear  that  Madame  F.'s  hopes  will  be 
dashed  by  the  fact  that  the  French  have  no  eyes  or  ears  except 
for  a  Jewess  called  Rachel,  but  as  they  have  nothing  near  as 
good  in  the  male  line,  we  may  yet — between  us — show  them 
something  1 

"  If  this  fails — and  I.  have  seen  too  much  of  the  public  to  be 
surprised  at  any  ingratitude — there  are  ahvays  those  wonderful 
new  goldiields,  w^here  men  of  our  race  and  speech  are  flocking, 
pickaxe  on  shoulder.  Surely  after  their  arduous  toil  for  the 
filthy  lucre,  they  must  be  longing  of  an  evening  for  a  glimpse 
of  the  higher  life — I  understand  they  have  only  drinking 
shanties. 

"  Imagine  it,  Jinny — a  theatre  for  the  rugged  miners  amid 
the  primeval  mountains  with  a  practicable  moon  shining  over 
the  tropical  scene.  Pity  I  sold  Duke  that  theatre-tent,  but  I 
suppose  it  couldn't  be  transported  to  Australia  as  easily  as  a 
convict.  (Good  gag,  that,  eh  ?)  Admission,  I  suppose,  by 
nugget.  I  don't  see  how  you  can  give  change — unless  they 
take  it  in  gold-dust — and  anyhow,  flush  as  they  are,  they  will 
probably  hand  in  considerable  chunks  at  the  box-office, 
reckless  of  petty  calculation. 

"  So  do  not  be  surprised  if  one  Easter  morn  you  receive  a 
golden  tgg  laid  by  some  Australian  goose  (I  understand  it  is 
half  a  mole).  Which  reminds  m^e  to  enclose  herewith  the  half- 
crown  I  owe  you.  I  dare  say  you  have  forgotten  my  borrowing 
it  from  you  in  the  caravan  of  my  blood-sucking  son-in-law. 
But  players  have  long  memories. 

"  1  suppose  you  see  nothing  of  him  or  of  Polly,  for  Chipstone 
is  a  poor  pitch,  but  I  am  afraid  from  a  Christmas  card  Polly 
sent  me  in  reply  to  mine  that  the  rascal  is  making  her  happy, 
so  I  can't  hate  him  as  much  as  he  deserves. 

"  '  I  hope,'  I  scribbled  across  the  picture  of  the  snowy 
Mistletoe  Bough  I  sent  her,  '  you  are  experiencing  all  that 
matrimony  was  designed  for,  when  this  institution  was  intro- 
duced into  Eden.'  Lovely,  isn't  it  ?  And  where  do  you 
suppose  it  came  from  i     It  was  that  delicious  Martha's  fare- 


528  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

well  wish  to  me  on  my  wedding  morning  !     I  fancy  she  took 
it  out  of  the  number  of  the  Lightstand  that  I  bought  her. 

"  Poor,  dear  Martha  1  Do  give  her  my  love  and  tell  her 
there  is  a  branch  of  the  New  Jerusalemites  in  Boulogne — no, 
best  make  it  two,  while  you  are  about  it,  a  French  branch  as 
well  as  an  English  branch,  mutually  emulous  in  '  Upbuilding  !  ' 

"  And  how  is  her  dashing  cavalier  of  a  son  who  posed  as  an 
American  ?  I  expect  he's  married  by  now  to  the  queen  of  the 
wasp-killers,  judging  by  the  warm  vvay  things  were  going  at 
my  own  wedding-party.  If  so,  pray  hand  him  back  his 
mother's  Christadelphian  wedding-wish  with  my  kind  regards. 

"  Oh,  and  don't  forget  to  say  amiable  things  (as  they  put  it 
here)  to  Miss  What's-a-name,  the  young  and  lovely  brides- 
maid !  Tell  her  I  haven't  forgotten  about  her  becoming 
wardrobe  mistress,  though  if  we  go  to  Australia,  I'm  afraid 
it'll  be  too  rough  for  her  at  her  age,  and  even  Madame  F.  may 
shrink  from  the  snakes  and  the  blacks  and  the  convicts  and 
the  desperado  diggers,  in  which  case  we  shall  have  boys  to  do 
the  female  parts  and  revive  the  glories  of  the  Shakespearean 
stage. 

"  Heavens,  how  I  have  let  myself  chatter  on  !  My  paper  is 
nearly  at  an  end — like  youth  and  hope  !  Believe  me,  dear 
Jinny,  in  this  world  or  the  next  (don't  be  alarmed,  I  only  mean 
Australia), 

"  Your  ever  devoted, 

"  Tony  Flippance. 

"  P.S. — I  am  so  sorry  but  I  find  I  can't  find  (excuse  my 
Irish)  any  vvay  of  sending  the  half-crown  by  post,  so  I  am 
compelled  to  send  you  an  lOU,  but  if  you  send  it  to  Polly 
(Duke's  Marionettes,  England,  is  sure  to  find  her  some  day) 
I  have  no  doubt  she  will  honour  it  on  my  behalf.  Safest 
address  for  me  by  the  way  is  Poste  Restante,  Boulogne,  as 
Madame  F.  likes  trying  different  hotels. 

"  P. P.S. — There  is  a  game  here  called  '  Little  Horses.'  Most 
fascinating." 

Many  and  mixed  were  Jinny's  feelings  as  she  ploughed  through 
this  bulky  document,  swollen  by  the  opulent  handwriting. 
Having  no  notion  about  investments,  she  vaguely  imagined  that 
Spanish  robbers  had  impounded  Cleopatra's  money,  and  it 
added  to  her  sense  of  the  unsettled  state  of  the  Continent.     As 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  529 

for  the  lOU,  she  was  angrily  amused  to  think  that  he  had 
already  paid  her  the  half-crown  on  the  very  morning  of  the 
bacon  and  mushrooms  so  fondly  recalled,  and  that  she  had 
bought  him  his  wedding  present — a  Bible — with  it.  To  pay 
little  debts  twice  over  while  defrauding  the  big  creditors  (and 
she  had  reason  to  think  Miss  Gentry  as  well  as  the  Purleys  had 
been  left  unpaid)  seemed  to  her  only  an  aggravation  of  feckless- 
ness.  But  perhaps  the  Flippances  had  not  meant  to  be  dis- 
honest :  it  was  those  Spanish  freebooters  that  were  to  blame,  who 
had  captured  the  gold  destined  for  Little  Bradmarsh.  The 
humiliation  of  his  reference  to  Blanche  was  hard  to  bear — it 
made  her  want  to  dismiss  Will  altogether — but  oddly  enough  a 
still  keener  emotion  was  kindled  by  Mr.  Flippance's  obsession 
with  Australia.  Yes,  Australia  was  in  the  air,  it  was  a  net  into 
which  everybody  was  being  swept.  Will  was  going  from  her — 
and  to  a  place  bristling  with  blacks  and  snakes  and  convicts 
and  desperado  diggers.  Never  had  she  received  so  perturbing 
a  letter. 

VII 

In  the  menacing  silence  of  Will,  she  began  to  study  this  inter- 
loping and  kidnapping  Australia.  For  it  was  not  only  his 
silence  that  menaced :  through  the  hundred  threads  of  her 
carrying  career — antennae  always  groping  for  news  of  him — she 
learned  that  his  resolve  was  fixed.  Indeed,  Frog  Farm  was 
almost  the  only  place  on  her  rounds  where  his  departure  was 
not  talked  of.  At  the  fountain  head  she  could  collect  no  infor- 
mation, for  Martha  was  the  only  person  she  now  saw  there  and 
the  old  lady  seemed  anxious,  after  receiving  her  parcels,  to  rush 
back  to  the  clearing  up  of  the  colossal  mess  of  the  receded  flood  : 
a  work  in  which  the  scrupulously  invisible  Will  was  understood 
to  be  lending  a  hand  almost  as  vigorous  as  his  father's,  albeit  a 
single  hand.  But  if  the  other  was  still  in  its  sling,  it  was  getting 
dangerously  better,  she  gathered  from  Bundock's  father. 

That  he  would  go  without  another  word  to  her  was  highly 
probable.  Was  there  not  in  Finchingfield  a  hot-tempered 
farmer  who  had  kept  silence  for  seven  years  after  his  wife's 
death  ?  Miss  Gentry,  who  in  her  Colchester  days  used  to  make 
his  wife's  gowns — the  lady  riding  in  behind  him  to  be  measured — 
said  it  was  from  remorse  because  he  had  once  used  an  improper 
expression  to  her.     And  this  same  Essex  obstinacy  was  liable  to 

2  L 


530  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

manifest  itself  in  less  noble  forms,  as  her  grandfather's  feuds  had 
proved  abundantly.  Will  would  shake  off  the  soil  of  old  England 
as  surlily  as  he  had  shaken  it  off  in  his  boyhood.  As  he  had  run 
away  from  his  parents,  so  he  would  now  run  away  from  her, 
though  far  more  unreasonably.  But  this  time  she  would  at 
least  know  where  he  was  going,  and  her  tortured  soul  reached 
out  hungrily  to  picture  his  new  world.  The  Spelling-Book  was 
absolutely  blank  about  Australia — ^how  empty  and  worthless 
loomed  that  storehouse  of  information,  with  this  gigantic  lacuna  ! 
— but  from  a  bound  magazine  volume  of  Miss  Gentry's,  borrowed 
for  the  first  time,  she  drew  confirmation  of  her  worst  fears.  It 
was  a  place  that  needed  many  more  stations  and  out-stations  of 
the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge,  and  there  w^ere 
mosquitoes  that  could  only  be  kept  off  by  lighted  torches,  and 
biting  spiders  as  big  as  your  palm  ;  after  frying  at  105  in  the 
shade,  you  might  shiver  the  next  moment  in  the  icy  blast  of  the 
"  Southern  Buster."  And  there  were  dust-winds  to  boot.  If 
you  went  to  the  cemetery  of  Port  Phillip,  you  would  see  that  the 
majority  of  deaths  were  between  the  ages  of  thirty  and  forty. 
This  premature  mortality  was  due  to  the  excessive  drinking  of 
cold  water  natural  in  so  droughty  a  country.  What  a  blessing 
that  Will  was  not,  like  Mr.  Skindle,  a  member  of  the  Temperance 
Friendly  Society  !  Nor  was  the  labour  market,  congested  as  it 
was  with  ticket-of -leave  men  and  bounty-emigrants  from  England, 
really  superior  to  that  of  the  old  country,  while  house-rents  were 
twice  as  high.  As  for  the  interior,  another  number  of  the 
magazine  contained  a  story  in  which  "  an  ill-favoured  man  with 
his  arm  in  a  sling  "  was  pursued  by  a  bull  amid  mimosa  swamps 
in  a  setting  of  blacks  with  tomahawks  and  whites  with  pistols. 
"  The  Bull  and  the  Bush,"  she  murmured  whimsically  to  herself, 
but  at  heart  she  was  cold  with  apprehension. 

Then  by  a  strange  coincidence  she  found  reassurance.  Calling 
on  Mrs.  Bidlake  in  her  confinement,  she  found  the  mother  well 
and  the  new  child  vigorous.  But  it  was  not  from  their  condition 
merely  that  emanated  the  novel  atmosphere  of  happiness  that 
radiated  over  the  household  :  perhaps,  indeed,  the  well-being 
was  only  a  consequence  of  the  happiness.  For  the  Bidlakes,  too, 
were  off  to  i^ustralia,  though  not  to  the  goldfields.  The  cloud 
over  the  family  had  lifted  at  last.  Not  that  Hezekiah  had  been 
proved  innocent,  but  that  he  was  become  opulent.  Released  on 
ticket-of-leave,  the  sturdy  ploughman  had  got  a  position  with  a 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  531 

cottage  and  garden  in  that  "  splendid  suny  dim  "  as  he  now 
called  it,  and  then,  just  as  he  was  about  to  send  for  Sophy  and 
Sally,  he  had  won  six  hundred  and  forty  acres  on  the  outskirts 
of  Port  Phillip  in  a  lottery  run  by  the  Bank  of  Australasia  !  If 
he  could  borrow  the  capital  from  the  bank,  as  was  not  improbable, 
he  would  be  able  to  cut  up  his  prize  into  ten-acre  allotments  and 
build  houses  on  it — by  that  you  simply  doubled  or  trebled  your 
outlay  in  a  few  years.  His  sister  should  have  a  house  any- 
how, and  in  the  meantime  her  husband  could  help  him  manage 
or  farm  the  vast  estate.  As  for  the  **  dere  gels  "  there  would  be 
no  need  for  them  to  work  now,  though  if  they  wanted  pocket- 
money  they  would  be  snapped  up  for  service,  and  get  as  much 
as  sixteen  pounds  a  year  each.  He  had  already  sent  fifty  pounds 
towards  the  passage-money,  and  w^ould  raise  more  when  he 
knew  if  they  would  all  come  out,  and  moreover  he  understood 
that  there  was  a  Family  Colonization  Society  in  London  to 
which  Ephraim  might  apply  for  an  advance.  What  a  change, 
this  going  out  of  theirs,  from,  that  dreadful  departure  in  the 
prison  coach  for  the  hulks  and  Botany  Bay  !  Jinny,  sharing 
their  tears  of  joy,  was  vastly  relieved  on  her  own  account  at  the 
paradise  the  grotesquely  spelt  letter  conjured  up,  and  she 
rejoiced  to  reflect  that  all  that  ancient  barbarous  harshness  of 
magistrates  and  judges  had  led  under  Providence  to  the  enrich- 
ment of  Britain's  new  soil  with  the  sweat  of  her  skilled  agricul- 
turists, and  was  even  opening  up  new  horizons  for  their  innocent 
relatives.  For  assuredly  this  was  d.  paradise  on  earth,  if  Heze- 
kiah's  letter  was  not  a  shameless  lure  for  his  brother-in-law. 

Think  of  tea  at  eighteenpence  a  pound — even  a  shilling  if  bought 
by  the  chest ! — think  of  sugar  at  twopence-halfpenny,  and  neck 
of  mutton  at  a  penny  a  pound,  nay,  a  whole  sheep  for  five 
shillings.  Think  of  pork  at  twopence  and  the  best  cows'  butter 
at  sixpence  ;  and  after  one  has  been  reduced  to  turnips  and  dry 
bread,  think  of  a  land  where  ox-tails  can  be  had  for  the  skinning 
and  sheeps'  heads  and  plucks  by  the  barrow  for  the  fetching 
away.  A  land  where,  as  he  wound  up  rapturously,  any  man 
who  worked  could  have  his  bellyful,  and  where  everything 
was  plentiful  except  women,  so  that  Ws  girls  would  be 
able  to  pick  and  choose  among  the  "  gumsuckers  "  and  have 
"  cornstalks  "  for  husbands.  Tliey  shouldn't  marry  among  the 
"  prisoners,"  please  God,  for  he  didn't  reckon  himself  in  that  set, 
having  done  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,  though  he  did  see  now 


532  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

that   threshing-machines  were  necessary  when    you   had    a  lot 
of  land. 

"  If  they  want  women  so  badly,  I  might  do  worse  than  go 
myself,"  said  Jinny  laughingly. 

"  No,  no,  whatever  would  Little  Bradmarsh  do  without  you  ? " 
said  Ephraim. 

"  They  did  without  me  well  enough,"  she  said  bitterly.     Indeed 
her  first  fine  faith  in  human  nature  could  not  be  mended  as 
easily  as  the  broken  bridge,  nor  did  the  depreciatory  allusions  of 
her  old  customers  to  the  deceased  coach,  and  their  compliments 
at  her  return,  soften  her  cynicism.     And  as  she  spoke,  she  felt  a 
sudden  yearning  to  be  done  with  them  all :    the  infection  of  the 
new  world  began  to  steal  into  her  veins  too,  but  she  knew  her 
own   exodus  was  impossible  while  her  grandfather  lived,   and 
though  she  played  with  the  idea  and  asked  if  she  might  copy 
Hezekiah's  instructions  for  the  passage,  her  real  design  was  to 
gather    information    for    Will's    sake.     It    was    very    worrying 
though  to  copy  the  recommendations  in  the  original  spelling. 
''  Of  kors  i  don't  now  wot  the  shipps  is  like  now^erdies,  but  the 
nu  chums  ses  they  dont  give  no  solt,  onni  roc-solt  (solt  is  peny 
a  pound  here,   peper   2d.   nounc)   and  you'll  want   thik  warm 
close  and  moor  beding."     There  was  an  elaborate  list  of  pro- 
visions necessary  to  supplement  the  ship's  dietary  during  the 
four  Vv^eary  months — it  hardly  needed  copying,  since  it  embraced 
a  little  of  everything  edible  that  would  keep — but  she  was  glad 
again  that  Will  w^as  not  a  temperance  man  when  she  found  a 
bottle  oi  brandy  recommended  as  an  indispensable  medicine  for 
the  contingencies  of  the  voyage. 

Neglecting  even  the  last  instalment  of  her  debt  to  Miss  Gentry 
— had  not  the  dressmaker  given  her  the  alternative  of  working 
it  out  ? — Jinny  began  to  acquire  the  longest-lived  comestibles, 
storing  them  secretly  in  one  of  the  ante-room  chests.  And  it 
was  by  this  concentration  on  Will's  interests  that  she  managed 
to  live  through  his  dreadful  silence,  nay,  to  enjoy  long  spells  of 
day-dreaming  in  which  these  edibles  were  for  their  joint  Aus-' 
tralian  larder.  The  goldfields  her  imagination  dismissed  as 
bristling  with  "  desperado  diggers.'"  It  was  on  the  more  idyllic 
images  of  her  magazine  article,  written  before  the  days  of  the 
discovery  of  gold,  that  her  imagination  fed.  For  though  the 
writer  denigrated  the  urban  labour  market,  he  admitted  that 
there  was  plenty  of  room  for  rural  labour,  and  then — with  what 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  533 

seemed  so  uncanny  a  prying  into  her  affairs  that  it  flushed  her 
cheek  and  made  her  heart  beat  faster — he  postulated  a  young 
couple  without  capital  setting  up  housekeeping  together,  and 
instructed  them  to  take  employment  with  a  farmer  while  saving 
up  enough  to  buy  a  small  farm  or  herd  of  their  own.  The 
system,  it  appeared,  was  that  the  employer  supplied  rations  as 
well  as  money-wages,  and  that  while  the  husband  worked  on 
the  land,  the  wife  could  do  the  farm  cooking.  (How  lucky  she 
had  had  so  much  experience,  Jinny  thought.)  Nay,  these  rations, 
said  the  article  (pursuing  her  affairs  to  what  the  blushing  reader 
thought  the  point  of  indelicacy)  would  practically  suffice  for  the 
children  too,  and  when  they  grew  up— but  her  delicious  day- 
dream rarely  went  so  far  as  this  calculation  of  them  as  independent 
labour-assets. 

The  happy  couple  would  also  be  permitted  to  keep  a  few  cows, 
pigs,  and  fowls.  Here  the  thought  of  Methusalem  would  intrude 
distressfully,  and  the  difficulty  of  transporting  him  to  the 
Antipodes.  But  when  he  had  been  left  at  Frog  Farm  in  the 
loving  hands  of  Caleb  and  Martha  (become  almost  his  parents- 
in-law),  under  promise  of  leisurely  grazing  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
with  perhaps  a  rare  jaunt  to  Chipstone  market  for  their  household 
needs,  this  ideal  solution  only  reminded  her  of  the  phantasmal 
nature  of  the  whole  scheme,  for  Frog  Farm  could  certainly  not 
be  saddled  with  her  grandfather.  But  lest  she  should  remember 
too  cruelly  its  visionary  character,  the  day-dream  would  at  this 
point  dart  off  sw^iftly  on  the  journey  through  the  Bush  in  quest 
of  an  idyllic  spot  free  from  blacks  and  provided  with  a  generous 
employer. 

Fortunate  that  this  journey  was  to  be  so  inexpensive,  there  being 
no  inns  (not  even  "The  Bull  and  Bush  "),  but  every  settler  being 
compelled  by  a  wise  decree  of  this  wonderful  State  to  give  the 
bona  fide  traveller  board  and  lodging  for  nothing.  \Miat  a 
lovely  journey  that  would  be — if  only  one  dodged  the  blacks  and 
the  diggers  and  the  swamps  with  the  alligators.  She  saw  herself 
and  Will  bounding  along  like  kangaroos  (with  Nip  of  course  in 
attendance,  she  did  not  intend  to  take  up  with  a  dingo  instead) 
through  mimosa-bushes  (Hke  the  scrub  on  the  Common,  only 
gaudier),  and  eating  their  dinner-packets  under  giant  gum-trees, 
so  enchanting] y  blue,  whose  tops,  five  hundred  feet  high,  one 
might  climb  so  as  to  survey  the  route  for  signs  of  native  camps 
or  friendly  farmers.     If  there  was  no  settler  in  sight  by  the  time 


534  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

darkness  fell,  they  would  just  perch  themselves  like  birds  in  a 
nest  of  high  branches  out  of  all  danger,  and  go  to  sleep  under 
the  starry  heaven,  which  she  saw  vividly  with  the  old  constella- 
tions. 

Closer,  to  the  real  was  her  picture  of  the  tenement  with  which 
the  ideal  farmer  (when  found)  would  provide  his  young  couple. 
There  would  just  be  a  few  poles  driven  into  the  ground  to  support 
the  roof  of  gum-bark,  with  its  hole  to  let  out  the  smoke.  But 
of  course  one  need  not  live  much  indoors  in  that  climate — 
despite  the  occasional  vagaries  of  the  "  Southerly  Buster  " — and 
it  would  be  all  the  easier  not  to  have  to  spend  money  on  furni- 
ture. Why,  put  in  Nip's  basket,  lay  out  Will's  razor  and  slippers, 
set  out  her  Spelling-Book  and  the  Peculiar  Hymn-Book  the 
young  rebel  had  thrown  into  the  bushes,  hang  up  his  hat  and 
her  bonnet,  and  the  place  already  begins  to  look  like  home.  As 
for  Will's  box — presumably  conveyed  to  the  chosen  spot  by  the 
local  carrier  in  a  bullock-cart — it  is  so  large  it  will  crowd  out 
everything  else  and  furnish  the  place  of  itself.  Decked  with  a 
rug  it  will  serve  as  sofa,  covered  with  a  cloth  it  becomes  a  table. 
Lucky  she  has  not  brought  a  box  of  her  own,  but  has  squeezed 
her  things  into  his — in  that  wonderful,  incredible  fusion  of  two 
existences  ! 

It  was  hard  to  wake  from  these  day-dreams  to  the  wretched 
reality,  and  yet  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  profited  from  one  of  these 
awakenings,  for  her  Australian  hut  had  reminded  her  of  his 
English  specimen,  and  she  hurried  to  see  it  and  him.  She  found 
them  both  in  a  bad  way.  His  wading  overmuch  in  the  flood  in 
quest  of  salvage  had  brought  back  more  than  a  touch  of  his 
rheumatism,  while  the  winds  and  rain  had  left  his  shanty  leakier 
than  ever.  They  were  both  breaking  up,  the  ancient  and  his 
shell,  and  she  now  did  her  best  to  patch  both  up.  Already  in 
her  new  affluence  she  had  called  in  young  Ravens  to  mend  her 
grandfather's  bedroom  ceiling  and  redaub  the  gaps  in  the  walls, 
and  it  was  simple  to  turn  this  Jack-of-all-trades  and  fountain  of 
melody  on  to  the  derelict  hut  in  the  woods.  The  poor  old  "  Uncle  " 
had  hitherto  built  his  fire  as  well  as  he  could  on  the  ground  on 
the  leeward  side-  of  his  hut ;  Jinny  new  installed  an  old  stove 
which  she  bought  up  cheap  at  the  pawnbroker's  and  conveyed 
to  the  verge  of  the  wood.  But  the  hole  in  the  roof  that  might 
serve  for  Australia  would  not  do  for  England,  and  after  Ravens 
had  re-thickened  the  walls  with  fresh  faggots  and  re-thatched 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  535 

the  hut  with  shavings  presented  by  Barnaby,  Jinny  was  amused 
to  find  that  what  seemed  an  iron  chimney  turned  out  on  closer 
inspection  to  consist  of  three  old  top-hats.  Where  the  ancient 
had  picked  up  these  treasures — whether  in  the  flood  or  in  his 
normal  Scavenging — he  refused  to  say.  "  Happen  Oi've  got  a 
mort  o'  culch  ye  don't  know  of,"  he  cackled,  enjoying  her  admira- 
tion of  his  architecture.  She  wanted  to  have  a  floor  to  the  hut, 
but  this,  like  the  exchange  of  his  sacking  for  a  pallet-bed,  he 
opposed  strenuously.  "  Gimme  the  smell  o'  the  earth,"  he  said. 
''  YeVe  shut  out  the  stars  and  that's  enough."  He  accepted, 
however,  a  bolster  for  a  pillow^ 

By  such  interests  and  devices,  aided  by  her  regular  rounds, 
Jinny  staved  off  too  clear  a  consciousness  of  the  inevitable 
parting,  which  would  not  even  have  the  grace  of  a  parting.  But 
the  inexorable  moment  was  like  a  black  monster  bearing  down 
upon  her — and  yet  it  was  not  really  advancing,  it  was  rather 
something  retreating  :  it  could  not  even  be  visualized  as  a  shock 
against  v/hich  one  could  brace  one's  shoulders.  There  was  the 
horror  of  the  impalpable  in  this  silent  drift  away  from  her. 

But  when  at  last  the  day  of  departure  was  named,  and  came 
vibrating  to  her  across  a  dozen  subtle  threads,  the  negative 
torture  turned  to  a  positive  that  was  still  more  racking.  It  was 
on  the  Friday — unlucky  day  ! — that  Will  was  to  leave  for  London, 
and  here  was  already  Tuesday.  Some  of  her  threads  conveyed 
even  the  rumour  that,  in  order  to  save  a  little  cash  for  his  start 
at  the  Antipodes,  he  meant  to  work  his  passage.  And  here  was 
she  unable  to  pack  his  box  or  even  to  slip  her  provisions  into  it ; 
doomed  by  all  the  laws  of  sex  and  proper  spirit  to  watch — bound 
hand  and  foot  as  in  a  nightmare— the  receding  of  the  mate 
whose  lips  had  sealed  her  his.  By  the  Wednesday  morning|even 
her  grandfather  observed  something  was  wrong. 

"  Ye  ain't  eatin'  no  breakfus." 

"  Yes,  Gran'fer,  lots  !  " 

"  Do  ye  don't  tell  me  no  fibs,  Oi've  noticed  your  appetite 
fallin'  lower  and  lower  like  the  flood,  and  now  there's  a'mos' 
naw^then  o'  neither.     And  ye  used  to  be  my  little  mavis  !  " 

"  You  don't  want  me  to  eat  snails  or  worms  ?  " 

"  'Tis  your  singin',  Oi  mean." 

"  There  is  Hey  /  "  she  chanted  obediently. 

"  Ye're  the  most  aggravatin'  gal — minds  me  o'  your  great- 
gran'mother.     Ye  need  your  mouth  for  eatin',  not  singin'." 


536  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

After  a  sleepless  night,  unable  to  bear  this  inactivity,  she  ran 
round  to  the  Bidlake  lodgings  to  suggest  that  as  young  Mr.  Flynt 
seemed  to  be  sailing  for  Australia,  it  might  be  a  neighbourly  action 
to  show  him  Hezekiah's  hints  to  travellers.     But  she  gathered 
from  the  happy  mother  that  the  absent  Ephraim  had  already 
talked  to  Will  about  the  heavier  clothes  and  the  bedding,  and 
that  Will  had  said  how  fortunate  it  was  he  had  sold  off  his 
summer  suits,  so  as  in  any  case  to  get  the  latest  make  at  Moses 
&  Son's  on  his  passage  through  London.      Jinny  suspected  he 
had  sold  them  off  to  raise  funds  for  the  voyage.     Still  the  bravado 
of  this  pretence  of  a  I^ondon  outfit  did  not  displease  her.     She 
learnt  too  that  there  had  been  a  question  of  Will's  convoying 
the   ex-convict's   daughters   to   their  impatient   parent,    as   the 
Ephraim  Bidlakes  would  not  be  ready  for  ages,  but  it  had  been 
thought  scarcely  proper  in  view  of  their  age  and  looks — a  decision 
Jinny  thought  wise.     Indeed,  the  idea  that  he  was  not  to  be  thus 
companioned  almost  reconciled  her,  by  contrast,  to  his  departure. 
When  she  got  home  she  found  to  her  surprise  that  her  grand- 
father was  entertaining  Martha  Flynt,  who  was  far  from  the 
spruceness  she  usually  achieved  for  outsiders  of  the  other  sex. 
She  looked  draggled  and  worn  after  her  long  and  windy  walk. 
What  astonished  Jinny  most  was  that  the  old  rheumatic  woman 
should  have  trudged  so  far,  and  she  opined  that  her  business 
must  be  pressing  and  must  be  with  herself.     For  it  could  hardly 
lie  in  the  Christ adelphian  texts  with  w^hich  Martha  seemed  to 
be  battering  and  bemusing  the  nonagenarian,  whose  great  Bible 
lay  open  between  them,  and  who  was  disconcerteci  to  find  her 
texts  really  there. 

Martha  had  never  set  foot  in  Blackwater  Hall  before,  so  far 
as  Jinny  could  remember,  and  very  strange  it  was  to  see  her 
sitting  over  her  cup  of  tea  which  she  must  have  made  for  herself 
at  her  host's  invitation.  With  all  his  perturbation  over  the 
texts,  he  seemed  only  too  brisked  up  by  this  amazing  visit  from 
a  female,  the  first  un whiskered  being,  save  Jinny,  he  had  met  for 
many  moons.  It  was  a  fillip  he  did  not  need.  Jinny  considered  :  . 
tlie  old  good  food  again,  the  sweet  security,  the  satisfaction  of 
revenge,  had  made  his  eyes  less  bleared,  filled  out  his  flacked 
cheeks  and  given  him  a  new  lease  of  strength  and  sanity- — a  sort 
of  second  wind — and  this  visit  might  only  over-stimulate  him.. 
She  did  not  like  the  undercurrent  of  excitement  that  showed 
itself  in  the  twitching  of  his  limbs  and  eyelids,  especially  when 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  537 

Martha  declared  he  could  not  be  really  accepting  the  Book  as 
all-inspired  if  he  believed  man's  heaven  lay  in  the  skies. 
"  Whither  I  go,  ye  cannot  come,"  she  repeated. 

"We'll  see  about  that,"  said  Daniel  Quarles  fiercely,  and 
clenched  his  fists  as  if  he  meant  to  storm  the  gates  of  cloudland. 
"  And  ain't  ye  forgittin'  'Lijah  what  went  up  to  heaven  with  a 
chariot  and  bosses  o'  fire  ?  That  won't  happen  to  'Lijah  S kindle, 
damn  him — he'll  have  the  chariot  o'  fire,  but  he  won't  git  no 
higher.     He,  he,  he  !  " 

Martha  was  niomentarily  baffled  by  Elijah's  ascension,  but 
recovering  her  nerve,  she  dealt  John  iii.  13,  "  No  man  hath 
ascended  up  to  heaven." 

Partly  to  soothe  the  old  man,  partly  to  give  Martha  a  chance 
of  speaking  out.  Jinny  here  intervened  with  the  suggestion  that 
he  himself  should  ascend  up  to  his  room  and  bring  down  the 
telescope  to  amuse  his  guest  withal.  Obviously  relieved — for  he 
felt  himself  in  a  tight  textual  corner — ^he  hastened  upstairs. 

It  was  then  that  the  old  woman,  bursting  into  tears,  and 
clutching  at  Jinny's  arm,  sobbed  out  :  "  Oh,  Jinny,  you've  got 
to  come  back  with  me — you've  got  to  come  back  at  once  !  " 

Jinny  turned  cold  and  sick.     What  had  happened  to  Will  ? 

"  But  what  for  ?  "  she  gasped. 

"  To  Willie  !  " 

Her  worst  fears  were  confirmed.     "  Is  he  hurt  ?  " 

"  I  wish  he  was  a  little,"  Martha  sobbed.  "  But  even  his 
arm's  all  right  now."  What  Martha  went  on  to  say  Jinny  never 
remembered,  for  she  was  suddenly  sobbing  with  Martha.  But 
hers  was  the  hysteria  of  relief,  and  w^hen  she  at  last  understood 
that  what  Martha  was  asking  was  that  she  should  come  back 
and  marry  Will,  so  that  he  should  stay  near  his  mother,  her 
heart  hardened  again.  It  was  not  that  she  m.ade  any  attempt 
to  deny  her  love — things  seemed  suddenly  to  have  got  beyond 
that — but  Martha,  she  felt,  knew  not  what  she  asked,  seeming 
to  have  divined  from  her  boy's  demeanour  a  lover's  quarrel,  but 
without  any  inkling  of  the  real  tangle  and  deadlock.  Even  if 
she  humiliated  herself,  as  Martha  half  unwittingly  suggested,  it 
was  all  a  blind-aUey. 

"  My  making  it  up  won't  keep  him  in  England,"  she  urged. 
"  He's  got  no  money.     And  no  more  have  I." 

She  might  have  been  more  willing  to  make  a  last  desperate 
dash  of  her  head  against  the  brick  wall,  had  she  understood  how 


538  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

Martha  had  fought  against  her  from  the  first  and  how  pitiable 
was  her  surrender  now,  but  no  suspicion  of  that  underground 
opposition  had  ever  crossed  her  mind,  nor  did  Martha  now 
confess  what  indeed  she  no  longer  remembered  clearly. 

"  But  there's  room  for  you.  in  Frog  Farm,  dearie.     We'd  love 
to  have  you.     We've  always  loved  you." 

"  I  can't,"  Jinny  moaned.  "  It's  all  no  use.  And  Fve  got 
Gran'fer ! "  Indeed,  Martha's  passionate  plea  had  curiously 
clarified  and  steadied  her  mind,  reconciling  her  to  the  inevitable. 
To  go  to  Will  was  exactly  what  she  had  been  yearning  to  do. 
But  when  the  plea  for  such  action  came  through  Martha's  mouth, 
she  could  see  it  from  outside,  as  it  were,  realize  its  futility  and 
cleanse  her  bosom  of  it.  She  felt  strangely  braced  by  her  own 
refusal. 

"  But  I've  got  some  provisions  for  the  voyage,"  she  said,  "  that 
you  might  smuggle  into  his  box — I  know  it's  big  enough.  And 
I  do  hope,  Mrs.  Flynt,  he's  not  going  to  work  his  passage." 

"I  only  wish  he  was,  for  he  mightn't  find  a  ship.  But  you  see 
Flynt  zoould  go  and  advance  him  the  money  and  insist  he  must 
go  steerage  like  a  gentleman.  He's  got  no  heart,  hasn't  Flynt," 
she  wept,  "  he  only  wants  to  settle  down  in  peace  after  Will  and 
the  flood,  and  sit  under  his  vine  and  fig-tree," 

"  Don't  cry — here's  Gran'fer  coming  down.  I  tell  you  what  I 
icill  do,  Mrs.  Flynt,  I  will  call  for  his  box." 

"  Oh,  bless  you.  Jinny  !  "  Martha  fell  on  her  neck.  "  If  you 
come,  he  won't  go  !     That's  as  sure  as  sunrise." 

"  And  then  I  can  bring  him  his  provisions,"  Jinny  pointed  out 
sceptically,  as  she  disentangled  herself  from  Martha's  arms. 
Then  both  females  were  dumbed  by  the  sight  of  the  Gaffer 
returning  in  his  best  smock  and  with  his  beard  combed  1  He 
tendered  Martha  the  telescope  with  a  debonair  gesture.  But 
Martha,  her  mission  comparatively  successful,  departed  so 
precipitately  that  the  poor  old  man  felt  his  toilette  wasted,  not 
to  mention  his  telescope. 

"  She's  a  flighty  young  woman,"  was  his  verdict,  "  as  full  o' 
warses  as  our  thatch  o'  warmin.  Sets  herself  up  agin  John 
Wesley  as  searched  the  Scriptures  afore  she  was  born."  And 
laying  down  his  telescope,  he  turned  over  the  pages  of  his  Bible, 
and  perpending  her  textual  irritants  and  questing  for  antidotes, 
fell  quietly  asleep. 

He  was  delie:hted  when  she  returned  the  next  afternoon,  and 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  539 

he  played  Genesis  v.  24,  with  a  snort  of  triumph,  by  way  of 
greeting.  Martha  tremulously  countered  with  Acts  ii.  34,  and 
denied  that  Enoch  had  gone  up  to  heaven,  but  it  was  obvious 
her  heart  was  not  in  the  game,  and  Jinny  was  glad  when  Ravens' 
ladder  was  clapped  against  the  casement  and  his  padded  knees 
appeared  in  an  ascension  of  a  purely  terrestrial  character,  however 
celestial  the  melody  that  accompanied  it.  For  the  Gaffer  had 
grown  fond  of  this  bird-of-all-work,  now  in  the  role  of  thatcher, 
and  would  hasten  to  hover  about  him,  fussily  directing  the 
operations  of  his  club,  shears,  or  needle,  correcting  the  words 
and  airs  of  his  songs,  and  even  joining  him  in  duets.  Ravens' 
encouragem.ent  of  the  older  bird  had  become  almost  as  alarming 
to  Jinny  as  his  shameless  delay  in  sending  in  his  bill  and  his 
positive  refusal  to  charge  for  Uncle  Lilliw^hyte's  repairs,  but  this 
afternoon  his  advent  was  welcome,  though  the  noise  and  jingle 
of  the  duets  outside  made  her  conversation  with  Martha  difficult, 
"  He  mustn't  go — he  mustn't  go,"  Mrs.  Flynt  sobbed.  "  It's 
like  the  New  Jerusalem  coming  down  and  going  up  again." 

Jinny  quite  appreciated  that.  "  I  thought  he  wouldn't  let 
me  call  for  his  box,"  she  said  quietly. 

"  No,  the  pig-headed  mule  !     He's  going  to  carry  it  himself." 
''  In  what  ?     It's  not  easy  to  get  anything  but  me." 
"  He    knows    that.     That's    why   he's    carrying   it.     On    his 
shoulders,  I  mean." 

"  With  his  arm  just  healed  1  " 

"  There  won't  be  much  inside— rhe's  going  to  buy  his  things  in 
London  !  " 

"  But  the  box  itself — why,  it's  big  enough  to  pack  himself  in  !  " 
"  I  know,  I  know,  dearie.     But  Caleb  says  he  carried  it  himself 
all  the  way  from  Chipstone,     And  chock-full,  too  !  " 

Jinny  suppressed  a  faint  smile.  "  I  remember,"  she  said. 
"  But  perhaps  he'll  break  down  before  he  gets  it  to  Chipstone," 
she  added  encouragingly. 

"  Oh,  do  you  think  so,  dearie  ?  "  Then  Martha's  face  fell. 
"  But  he  only  means  to  carry  it  to  '  The  King  of  Prussia.'  There's 
a  commercial  traveller  going  from  there  in  a  trap  to  catch  the 
same  coach." 

"  Then  let  us  hope  he'll  never  get  ^o  '  The  King  of  Prussia.'  " 
Martha  shook  her  head.     "  You  see,  Flynt's  offered  to  bear 
a  hand." 

"  Oh,  weU  !  "  said  Jinny.     "  Then  it's  all  settled."     . 


540  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  But  he  won't  have  his  father,  either.  Nearly  bullied  his 
head  oif.  So  Flynt's  going  to  keep  behind  him  all  the  way  in 
case  of  a  breakdown." 

The  picture  of  Caleb  slinking  furtively  along  the  roads,  behind 
his  boy  and  the  box,  moved  Jinny's  risible  muscles,  and  she 
burst  into  a  laugh  that  was  not  far  from  tears. 

"  Don't,  Jinny  !  I  can't  bear  it.  You  can't  love  him,  or  you 
wouldn't  sit  there  and  laugh.  I  always  knew  you  weren't  the 
right  girl  for  him  !  " 

Jinny  took  this  as  the  babbling  of  a  mind  distraught.  "  You'll 
get  ov^er  it,"  she  assured  the  old  woman,  patting  the  thin  hand 
with  the  worn  wedding-ring.  "  And  he's  bound  to  come  back." 
The  necessity  of  quieting  Martha  was  fortifying  :  Jinny  was  like 
a  queasy  passenger  saved  from  sea-sickness  by  having  to  look 
after  a  still  worse  sailor.  She  was  the  soul  of  the  company  at 
tea,  staving  off  the  duel  of  texts  and  sending  Ravens  into 
ecstasies  over  her  quips  and  flashes.  There  was  one  bad  moment, 
however,  w^hen  Daniel  Quarles  candidly  remarked  to  Mrs.  Flynt : 
"  Ravens  should  be  tellin'  me  as  your  Willie's  gooin'  furrin. 
Ye'll  be  well  riddy  o'  the  rascal." 

"  Willie's  an  angel !  "  cried  Martha  hysterically. 

"  How  could  there  be  angels  ef  there  ain't  no  heaven  ?  "  he 
queried,  with  a  crafty  cackle.  "  Noa,  noa,  Mrs.  Flynt,  it  ain't  no 
use  kiverin'  up  as  he's  a  bad  egg.  But  one  bad  in  a  dozen  or  sow 
is  fair  allowance.  Ye' re  luckier  than  me,  what  hadn't  even  one 
good  'un.     Now  ef  Ravens  here  had  been  my  buo-oy !  " 

Jinny  saw  Martha  a  bit  of  the  way  home.  She  had  now  found 
a  new  compromise.  "  Tell  Will  that  Ravens  will  come  with 
my  cart." 

"  And  what  will  be  the  good  of  that  ?  " 

"It  will  save  him  the  strain  of  carrying  the  box.  And  then 
as  to-morrow's  my  day,  I  shall  have  to  meet  my  cart  at  '  The 
King  of  Prussia.'  " 

"  Oh,  Jinny,  then  you  will  !  " 

"  Yes — but  don't  tell  him.  Only  say  Ravens  will  call  for  the 
box  at  eight  o'clock — that  will  give  him  time  to  walk  if  he  jibs 
at  the  cart  for  himself." 

It  had  all  been  arranged  with  the  obHging  bird-of-all-work,  and 
Ravens  had  left  Black  water  Hall  that  evening,  carolling  even 
more  blithely  than  usual,  when  Jinny  found — evidently  pushed 
under  the  house-door — a  mysterious  cocked-hat  addressed  "  Miss 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  541 

Bcldero."      With    trembling  fingers    she   opened   it,    her    heart 
thumping.     "  To  hell  with  Ravens  !     You  can  keep  him  !  " 

This  utterly  unexpected  flash  of  an  utterly  unforeseen 
jealousy,  and  the  thought  that  he  had  been  drawn  so  spatially 
near  again,  was  all  that  stood  between  her  and  despair  that 
last  dreadful  night. 

VIII 

When  the  fateful  Friday  dawned,  it  found  Jinny  fast  asleep, 
w^orn  out  after  long  listening  to  a  wind  that,  would  soon  be 
tossing  a  ship  about.  In  those  harsh  hours  she  had  felt  it  would 
be  impossible  to  get  up  and  go  on  her  round  in  the  morning. 
But  >  no  sooner  were  her  eyes  unsealed,  than  there  sprang  up  in 
her  mind  the  thought  that,  did  she  fail  her  customers  to-day, 
gossip  would  at  once  connect  her  breakdown  with  Will's  depar- 
ture. So  far,  she  had  reason  to  believe,  Martha's  guess  at  their 
relations  had  not  penetrated  outside.  But  eyes  w^ere  sharp  and 
tongues  sharper,  and  she  must  not  be  exposed  to  pity.  Under 
this  goad  she  sprang  up  instanter  and  did  her  hair  carefully 
before  the  cracked  mirror  and  dressed  herself  in  her  best  and 
smartest.  She  would  go  around  with  gibe  and  laughter  and 
fantasias  on  the  horn,  and  whatever  was  consonant  with 
celebrating  the  final  retreat  of  the  coach. 

The  morning  was  quiet  after  the  blustrous  night,  hut  the  year, 
like  her  fate,  was  at  its  dreariest  moment — no  colour  in  sky  or 
garden,  no  hint  of  the  Spring — and  at  breakfast  a  reaction  over- 
came her.  But  this  time  her  grandfather  did  not  observe  her 
depression :  he  was  too  full  of  the  crime  of  'lijah,  who — 
according  to  Martha — was  putting  his  m^other  in  the  Chipstone 
poorhouse  prior  to  installing  his  bride  in  Rosemary  Villa.  So 
garrulous  was  he  this  morning  that  Jinny — her  mind  morbidly 
possessed  by  a  story  of  a  miner  who  was  found  dead  of  starvation 
in  the  Bush  with  a  bag  of  gold  for  his  pillov/ — ceased  to  listen 
to  his  diatribes,  retaining  only  an  uneasy  sense  that  he  was 
twitching  and  jerking  with  the  same  excitement  as  when  Martha 
had  first  come.  *'  And  Oi  count  ye'U  be  doin'  the  same  with  me 
one  day,"  she  heard  him  say  at  last,  for  he  was  shaking  her  arm. 
"  But  Oi'd  have  ye  know  it's  my  business,  not  yourn — Daniel 
Quarles,  Carrier." 

jinny  v»'earily  assured  him  that  there  was  no  danger  of  her 
ever  marrying,  and  she  felt  vexed  with  Martha  for  coming  and 


542  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

starting  such  agitated  trains  of  thought  in  his  aged  brain. 
Possibly  the  fooHsh  mother  might  even  have  broached  to  him 
her  desire  to  rob  him  of  his  granddaughter.     •• 

"  Ye  ought  to  be  glad  Oi' ve  give  yc  food  and  shelter  and  them 
fine  clothes  yeVe  titivated  yourself  with,"  he  went  on,  unsoothed, 
"  bein'  as  there  ain't  enough  in  the  business  for  myself.  'Tis  a 
daily  sacrifice,  Jinny,  and  do  ye  don't  forgit  it." 

The  prompt  arrival  of  Ravens  made  a  break,  but  she  had  to 
cancel  with  thanks  her  request  for  his  services  with  the  cart,  and 
then,  when  the  old  man  was  settled  at  his  Bible,  and  her  bonnet 
and  shawl  were  on,  she  collapsed  in  the  ante-room,  sinking  down 
on  the  chest  in  which  she  had  hoarded  Will's  provisions,  and 
feeUng  her  resolution  oozing  away  with  every  tick  of  the  Dutch 
clock.  Impossible  to  whip  up  a  pseudo-gaiety,  to  make  the  tour 
of  all  these  inquisitive  faces  1  And  through  the  lassitude  of  her 
whole  being  pierced  every  now  and  then  her  grandfather's  voice, 
crying  "  Tush,  you  foolish  woman  !  "  She  knew  it  was  not 
meant  for  her,  but  for  an  imagined  Martha  whose  texts  he  was 
confuting,  but  it  sounded  dismally  apposite,  and  when  once  he 
declared  "  Wiser  folks  than  you  knowed  it  all  afore  you  was 
born,"  she  bowed  her  head  as  before  the  human  destiny. 

When  the  clock  struck  nine,  he  came  stalking  in.  "  Why, 
Jinny  !     Ain't  to-day  Friday  ?  " 

She  raised  a  miserable  face.  ''  Yes,  but  I'm  going  to-morrow 
instead  !  " 

"  To-morrow  be  dangnationed  !  "  he  cried,  upset.  "  Oi've, 
never  missed  my  Friday  yet." 

"  But  I  don't  feel  Hke  going  to-day." 

"  That'll  never  do.  Jinny.  Ye'll  ruin  my  business  with  your 
whimwhams  and  mulligrubs.     And  it  don't  yarn  enough  as  it  is." 

"  There's  no  competition — ^it  doesn't  matter  now." 

"  And  is  that  your  thanks  to  the  Lord  for  drown  din'  Pharaoh 
and  his  chariot  and  bosses  ?  " 

But  she  put  her  head  back  in  her  hands.  "  Do  let  me  be  !  " 
she  snapped. 

"  Don't  ye  feel  well,  Jinny  ?  "  he  said,  with  a  change  of  tone. 
"  Have  ye  got  shoots  o'  pain  in  your  brain-box  ?  " 

"I'm  all  right,  but  I  don't  want  to  go  to-day.  I  should  only 
make  muddles." 

"  We  don't  make  muddles,"  he  said  fiercely. 

"  Let  me  be.     I  can't  harness." 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  543 

"  Well,  then  Oi'll  do  it,  dearie.  You  just  set  there — Oi'll  put  the 
door  a  bit  ajar  and  once  you're  in  the  fresh  air  you'll  be  all  right." 

She  heard  him  shuffle  back  into  the  living-room  and  thence 
into  the  kitchen  as  the  shortest  way  to  the  stable,  and  then, 
almost  immediately,  she  became  aware  of  a  little  noise  at  the 
garden-gate.  She  was  sitting  opposite  the  clock,  and  through 
the  slit  at  the  doorway  she  beheld,  to  her  amaze,  a  red-headed 
figure  outside  the  gate,  sitting  on  a  box  and  mopping  its  brow 
as  it  gazed  sentimentally  at  the  cottage.  Even  in  the  wild 
leaping  of  her  pulses,  the  grdtesqueness  of  their  both  sitting 
gloomily  on  boxes — so  near  and  yet  so  far — tickled  her  sense  of 
humour.  But  as  she  sat  on,  smiling  and  fluttering,  she  saw 
him  rise,  cast  a  cautious  look  round,  open  the  gate,  and  steal 
towards  the  living-room.  In  a  bound  she  was  within  and  waiting 
by  the  closed  casement,  and  as  his  expected  peep  came,  the 
lattice  flew  back  in  his  face  and  her  hysteric  mockery  rang  out. 

'^  I  thought  you'd  never  look  on  my  face  again  !  " 

It  was  almost  a  greater  surprise  than  when  she  had  appeared 
with  Methusalem  walking  the  waters,  for  he  had  counted  her 
just  as  surely  set  out  on  her  Friday  round  as  the  sun  itself,  and 
his  sentimental  journey  safe  from  misunderstanding  (or  was  it 
understanding  ?). 

"  Oh,  don't  cackle  1  "  he  snarled.  "  I  might  have  guessed 
you'd  try  to  catch  me." 

She  gulped  down  the  sobs  that  were  trying  to  strangle  her 
speech.  How  glad  she  was  that  she  had  on  her  best  frock  !  "  I 
overslept  myself  !  "  she  said  gaily.  "  Gran'fer's  harnessing.  I 
see  you've  brought  your  box  !     You're  just  in  time  !  " 

"  I  haven't  brought  my  box  !  "  he  snapped. 

"  Do  ye  don't  tell  me  no  fibs,"  she  parodied. 

"  I  mean,  it's  going  from  '  The  King  of  Prussia.'  " 

"  Really  ?     Well  I'll  take  it  over  the  bridge  for  you." 

"  Thank  you  !     I'm  taking  it  there  myself." 

"  This  don't  seem  the  shortest  cut  to  Long  Bradmarsh^"  she 
observed  blandly. 

He  glowered.  "  Shows  how  easily  I  can  carry  it.  I'm  having 
a  good-bye  look  at  all  the  old  places." 

But  below  this  surface  conversation  they  were  holding  one  of 
their  old  silent  duologues.  Jinny's  heart  was  beating  fast  with 
happiness  and  triumph  as  her  eyes  told  him  he  would  never  get 
away  now,  and  he,  hypnotized  by  that  dancing  light  in  them. 


544  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

dumbly  acknowledged  he  was  self-trapped.  Yet  how  they  were 
going  tc  get  out  of  their  impasse,  and  how  his  pride  was  to  be 
reconciled  with  their  reconciliation,  neither  had  the  ghost  of  an 
idea.  "  I  see,"  she  replied,  as  if  accepting  his  explanation  of 
his  visit.  "  But  as  to  this  old  place,  I'm  afraid  Ravens  has 
rather  changed  the  look  of  it  with  his  new  thatch." 

He  snorted  at  the  name. 

"  But  you'll  find  it  unchanged  inside,"  she  added  affably,  "  if 
you  come  in." 

"  Don't  begin  that  again  !     You  know  I  can't." 

"Dear  me!  I  had  forgotten  that  old  nonsense.  Well,  you 
can  come  nearer  and  peep  in."     Her  face  shone  at  the  v/indow. 

His  face  worked  wildly  with  the  struggle  not  to  approach  hers. 
"  I  did  have  a  peep.     Good-bye,  I've  got  the  coach  to  catch." 

"  Well,  the  cart  will  be  ready  in  a  m^oment.  Gran'fer  is  so 
slow  harnessing.     Hark  !     Nip's  getting  impatient." 

He  raised  his  hat.  "  Thank  you,  but  I  told  you  I  was  my  own 
carrier." 

"  Good-bye,  then.     Pity  you  came  so  out  of  your  way." 

He  turned,  and  his  feet  dragged  themselves  hopelessly  gateward. 

She  waved  her  hand  desperately  through  the  casement. 

"  Good  luck,  Will !     Hope  you'll  strike  plenty  of  nuggets  !  " 

"  Thank  you,  Jinny  !  "     He  opened  the  gate. 

"  You'll  let  me  know  how  you're  getting  on." 

"  If  you  like  !  "  The  gate  clicked  behind  him.  Her  mother- 
wit  leapt  to  stave  off  the  moment  beyond  which  all  her  frenzied 
questing  for  some  solution  would  be  waste. 

"  Oh  dear  me,  Will  !  Where  is  my  memory  going  ?  Put  your 
box  in  the  porch  a  moment,  will  you  ?  " 

"  What  for  ?  " 

"  I've  got  a  few  little  things  for  the  voyage — I  really  forgot." 

"  Oh,  Jinny  !  "  He  came  back  through  the  gate.  "  But  I 
don't  need  to  bring  the  box  to  the  door.  I'll  take  the  things 
from  you  through  the  window." 

"  But  I  want  to  pack  them  in  properly — I  can't  on  the  road." 

"  There's  nobody  passing." 

"  You  never  can  tell.     We  don't  want  Bundock " 

"  But  I'll  pack  them  in  myself." 

"  I'd  never  trust  a  man — in  fact  I  expect  I'll  have  to  repack 
all  the  rest.     Look  at  Mr.  Flippance." 

But  still  he  hung  back.     "  There's  lots  of  room." 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  545 

''  I  know.  Like  a  sensible  man  you're  getting  your  outfit  in 
London.     Bring  it  along.     Or  shall  I  lend  you  a  hand  ?  " 

"  No  !  No  !  "  He  hurriedly  shouldered  the  huge  box  and 
finny  heard  its  contents  shifting  like  a  withered  kernel  in  a 
nutshell.  It  was  the  same  American  trunk  with  the  overarching 
lid,  and  as  he  swaggered  up  the  garden  with  it,  it  seemed  to 
her  as  if  time  had  rolled  back  to  last  Spring.  But  what  comedies 
and  tragedies  had  intervened  between  the  two  box-carryings, 
all  sprung  from  the  same  obstinacy  !  And  yet,  she  felt,  she 
did  not  love  him  the  less  for  his  manly  assertiveness  :  how 
sweet  would  be  the  surrender  when  their  sparring  was  over 
and '  her  will  could  be  legitimately  embraced  in  his,  held  like 
herself  in  those  masterful,  muscular  arms. 

Her  mind  was  really  in  her  Australian  hut  as  he  dumped  the  box 
at  her  feet.  No,  it  would  hardly  do  for  a  table,  she  thought,  with 
that  lid-curvature.     Then  she  braced  herself  for  a  tricky  tussle. 

"  Well,  where's  the  goods  ?  "  he  said  lightly. 

"  Don't  be  so  unbelieving — they're  in  that  spruce-hutch.  Four 
months,  you  know,  you've  got  to  provide  against." 

"  I  know,"  he  said  glumly,  unlocking  his  trunk  and  throwing 
up  the  lid  violently.  He  would  have  liked  to  smash  the  springs. 
But  the  lid,  lined  with  cheap  striped  cloth,  stood  up  stiffly, 
refusing  to  give  him  a  pretext  for  postponing  hisr  journey. 

Jinny  from  her  doorway  gazed  at  the  jumble  in  the  great  void. 

"  Shove  it  forward  a  bit,"  she  said  carelessly,  moving  back- 
wards within. 

"  What  for  ?  " 

"  Your  end  of  the  box  is  not  under  cover." 

"Why  should  it  be?" 

"  It  might  rain  and  spoil  your  things — I'm  sure  I  saw  a  drop." 
She  tugged  at  the  handle  and  the  trunk  slid  along  the  porch  and 
some  inches  over  the  sill.  Unostentatiously  he  pulled  it  back  a 
bit,  but  she  jerked  it  in  again.  "  Do  leave  it  where  I  can  see 
the  things,"  she  said  with  simulated  fretfulness.  "  Good 
gracious  !  "  She  drew  out  the  frock-coat  he  had  sported  for  the 
Flippance  wedding.     "  What's  this  grandeur  for  ?  " 

"  Oh,  for  funerals  and  things  like  that  1  " 

"  In  the  Bush  ?  And  fancy  packing  it  next  to  the  blanket. 
It's  all  over  hairs.  I'll  brush  it  and  sell  it  for  you — Ravens  will 
be  wanting  one  for  the  wedding." 

"  What  wedding  ?  "  he  demanded  fiercely. 

2  M 


546  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Mr.  Skindle's,  of  course.     Weren't  you  invited  ?  " 

He  winced,  and  unrebuked  she  threw  his  wedding  raiment 
over  the  provision-chest.  "  We'd  best  keep  this  on  top,"  she 
said,  drawing  out  the  blanket,  "  else  you  won't  get  at  it." 

"  I  expect  you'll  be  married  by  the  time  I'm  back,"  he 
remarked  with  aloofness. 

"  Not  I.  I'll  never  marry  now.  I've  seen  too  much  of  men's 
foolishness." 

"  Going  to  be  an  old  maid  ?  " 

"  If  I  live  long  enough  !  "     Her  vaunt  of  youth  was  dazzling. 

'*  Well,  I  hope  vou  won't !  "  he  said  fervently. 

"  Won't  live  ?  '  Oh,  Will !  " 

"  Won't  fade  into  that.  You  know  what  I  mean.  The 
sweetest  rose  must  fade." 

"  So  will  this  muffler — fortunately.  Haven't  you  taken  your 
dad's  '  muckinger  '  by  mistake  ?  " 

"  No,  no — you  leave  that  be." 

"  What  a  let  of  Sunday  collars  !  " 

"  Weekdays  too  I  like  a  clean  collar." 

"  Ow,  this  onrighteous  generation,"  she  said  in  Caleb's  voice,"  all 
one  to  them,  Sundays  or  no  Sundays."     She  pulled  up  his  cloak. 

"  You  leave  that  cloak  be  !  "  he  said,  laughing  despite  himself. 

"  But  now  your  sling's  off,  you  don't  need  it." 

"  Yes,  I  do.     Let  it  be,  please." 

But  she  unrolled  it  mischievously  and  a  packet  of  letters  fell 
ont-^— her  letters  about  the  great  horn. 

"  Well,  didn't  I  say  men  were  silly  !  "  she  cried.  "  Fancy 
taking  that  to  Australia."  And  she  made  as  if  to  hurl  them 
towards  the  living-room  fire. 

"  Give  'em  to  me  !  "  He  reached  for  them  angrily,  and  that 
gave  her  an  idea. 

"  But  they're  mine  !  "  Standing  at  the  end  of  the  box,  which 
made  a  barrier  between  them,  she  held  them  mockingly  just 
beyond  his  reach.  He  came  forward,  then  perceiving  one  foot  was 
right  across  the  forbidden  sill,  he  jerked  himself  back  violently. 
Then  balancing  himself  well  on  his  soles,  with  a  sudden  swoop  he 
curved  his  body  forward  to  the  utmost.  It  only  resulted  in  his  j 
nearly  falling  athwart  the  open  box.  He  recovered  his  balance 
and  the  perpendicular  with  some  difficulty  and  no  dignity. 

"  Take  care  !  "  she  cried  in  almost  hysterical  gaiety.  "  You 
nearly  crossed  that  time." 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  547 

"  You  give  me  my  property  !  "  he  cried  furiously. 

"  They're  as  much  mine  as  yours." 

"  Not  by  law.     You've  no  legal  right  to  detain  my  property." 

"  And  who's  detaining  it  ?  You've  only  got  to  come  and 
take  it!  " 

His   anger  was  enhanced  by  the  sounds  of  Daniel  Quarles 
returning  with  the  cart,  a  carolling,  lumbering,  barking  medley. 
•It  would  be  intolerable  to  be  caught  as  though  trying  to  cross 
the  threshold. 

"  Give  it  me,"  he  hissed.  "  I  don't  want  to  meet  him."  And 
as  she  tantalizingly  tendered  the  packet  nearer,  he  lunged 
towards  her  at  a  desperate  angle,  and  overreaching  himself  as 
she  deftly  withdrew  it,  fell  prone  into  the  open  box,  his  legs 
asprawl  in  the  air. 

"  Curl  'em  in,  quick,"  she  whispered,  with  an  inspiration,  tucking 
his  legs  in  before  he  knew  what  was  happening.  But  as  the 
lid  closed  on  him,  he  was  not  sorry  to  be  spared  the  encounter. 

"  Get  rid  of  him  !  "  he  implored  through  the  keyhole. 

"  Business  pouring  in,  Gran'fer !  "  she  cried  cheerily,  as  the 
Gaffer  came  up  astare.  "  Bear  a  hand  !  No,  no,  not  into 
the  cart.  It's  to  w^ait  here.  There  is  H.ey^'^  she  began 
chanting. 

"  There  is  Ree^'^  came  his  antiphone,  as  he  grasped  the  other 
handle.  "  Lord,  that's  lugsome  !  "  he  panted,  dropping  it  as 
soon  as  it  was  inside  and  letting  himself  fall  upon  it.  "  Whew  !  " 
he  breathed  heavily.  Nip,  too,  all  abristle  leaped  on  the  box 
and  yapped  hysterically,  as  though  nosing  for  a  rat.  This  was 
the  last  straw.  Will,  whose  head  the  Gaffer  was  pressing  through 
the  far  from  inflexible  lid,  and  who  already  felt  asphyxiating, 
gave  a  vigorous  heave. 

"  Why,  it's  aloive  !  "  cried  the  Gaffer,  jumping  up  nervously. 
Then  as  the  lid  flew  up,  Nip  was  hurled  into  space  and  Will's 
red  poll  popped  up.     "  It's  a  Will-in-the-box,"  cried  Jinny. 

"  Willie  Flynt !  "  gasped  the  Gaffer. 

"  Yes,  Gran'fer,"  she  said  in  laughing  triumph.  "  And  you 
carried,  him  in  !  " 

"  Ha,  ha,  ha  1  "  A  great  roar  of  glee  came  from  the  jubilant 
junior,  and  in  the  act  of  scrambhng  up,  his  knees  relaxed  in 
helpless  mirth  and  he  let  himself  fall  forward  once  more  in  the 
box,  in  a  convulsion  of  merriment.  "  Daniel  Quarles,  Carrier ! 
Ha,  ha,  ha  !  " 


548  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  And  see,  Gran'fer  !  "  cried  Jinny  in  still  greater  triumph. 
"  He  came  in  on  his  hands  and  knees  1  " 

Daniel  Quarles's  bemused  countenance  changed  magically. 

"  Ho,  ho,  ho !  "  he  croaked.  "  On  his  hands  and  knees ! 
Ho,  ho,  ho  !  " 

Will's  spasms  froze  as  by  enchantment. 

"  Come  along.  Will,"  said  Jinny,  hauling  him  out.  ''  It's  a 
fair  draw  and  you've  got  to  shake  hands." 

Will  manfully  put  out  his  hand.  "  You  nearly  squashed  me, 
Mr.  Quarles,"  he  said  ruefully. 

"  Ye  wanted  settin'  on,"  said  the  Gaffer,  chuckling,  and  he 
took  the  fleshy  young  hand  in  his  bony  fingers.  "  Ye  sot  your- 
self to  ruin  us.  But  what  says  the  Book  ?  "  he  demanded 
amiably.     "  He  that  diggeth  a  pit  shall  tumble  into " 

"  A  box,"  wound  up  Jinny  merrily. 

"  Oi  never  knowed  he  was  there,  did,  Oi'd  a-tarned  that  key," 
said  her  grandfather,  guffawing  afresh. 

"  And  everybody  would  have  thought  me  in  Australia,  and 
then  after  long  years  a  skeleton  would  have  been  found,"  said 
Will,  with  grim  humour. 

Jinny  clapped  her  hands.  "  Just  like  Mr.  Flippance's  play, 
^he  Mistletoe  Bough  !  " 

She  had  closed  the  house-door.  A  timid  tapping  at  it,  which 
had  gone  unobserved,  now  grew  audible. 

"  There's  your  dad  1  "  said  Jinny. 

Will's  eyes  widened.  "  My  dad  ? "  he  breathed  incredu- 
lously. 

"  Git  in  the  box ! "  whispered  the  Gaffer,  almost  bursting  with 
glee.     "  Git  in  the  box  !  "     His  sinewy  arms  seized  the  young    1 
man  round  the  waist. 

Will  struggled  indignantly.     "  I  nearly  choked  !  "  he  spluttered. 

"  Sh !  "  Jinny  with  her  warning  finger  and  dancing  eyes 
stilled  him.     "  Just  for  fun — only  for  a  moment !  " 

Her  instinct  divined  that  to  let  the  old  man  have  his  way 
would  be  the  surest  method  of  clinching  the  reconciliation.  He 
could  then  never  go  back  on  her  later,  never  resent  the  trick 
played  upon  him.  It  would  become  his  trick,  his  farce,  it  would 
provide  a  fund  of  happy  memories  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  And 
as  she  cried  "  Come  in  !  "  and  the  latch  lifted  and  Caleb's  white- 
rimmed,  cherubic  countenance  was  poked  meekly  through  a  gap, 
while  her  grandfather,  stroking  his  beard,  composed  his  face  to 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  549 

an  exaggerated  severity,  Jinny  felt  that  life  was  almost  too 
delicious  for  laughter. 

"  Hullo,  young  chap  !  "  was  the  Gaffer's  genial  greeting. 
"  What  brings  you  h-^re  ?  " 

"  Oi — Oi  happened  to  be  passin',"  explained  Caleb  awkwardly, 
while  his  puzzled  eyes  roved  from  the  girl  to  his  senior,  and  then 
towards  Nip,  who  was  cow^ering  in  a  corner,  too  nerve-shattered 
to  leap  on  the  lid  again.  "  You  ain't  seen  my  Willie  ?  "  He 
moved  forward  questingly. 

The  older  man  tried  to  answer,  then  a  guffaw  burst  from  that 
toothless  mouth,  and  turning  his  back  he  blew  his  nose  thun- 
drously  into  his  handkerchief,  while  his  lean  sides  shook  like  a 
jelly.  "  Why  ever  should  we  see  your  Willie  ?  "  cried  Jinny, 
saving  the  situation.     "  Ain't  he  gone  furrin  ?  " 

Caleb  rubbed  his  eyes.  "  But  Oi  seen  him  at  this  door— he'Jl 
be  late  for  the  coach." 

"  At  this  door  ?  "  the  Gaffer  succeeded  in  saying,  and  then  his 
handkerchief  came  into  play  again  and  he  sneezed  and  coughed 
and  blew  like  a  grampus. 

"  Oi  seen  him  just  by  the  sill,  swingin'  forth,  and  back  like  a 
parrot  on  a  perch." 

At  that  Jinny  had  some  pains  to  keep  a  stiff  lip,  and  even  the 
box-lid  quivered,  but  not  with  laughter,  she  surmised. 

"  I'm  afraid  you  must  have  dreamed  it,"  she  replied. 

"  Lord  !  "  quoth  Caleb,  and  dropped  dazedly  on  the  box.  To 
see  the  Gaffer's  face  when  the  lid  shot  up  under  his  visitor  was 
worth  more  than  Mr.  Flippance's  finest  show.  The  very  soul  of 
old  English  mirth  was  there.  You  would  have  thought  that  this 
crude  device  had  never  entered  human  brain  before,  was  as  fresh 
as  the  first  laughter  of  Eden.  And  w^hat  heightened  the  humour 
of  the  situation  was  that  Caleb  was  by  no  means  overpleased  to 
find  Will  had  no  intention  of  catching  his  coach.  Nor  did  he 
begin  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  thing  till,  admitting  that 
Martha  would  "  exult  in  gladness,"  it  occurred  to  him  what  a 
surprise  for  her  it  wovdd  be  to  get  her  boy  delivered  back  to  her 
inside  the  box.  Eagerly  the  two  old  men  imagined  the  scene, 
catching  fire  from  each  other,  improvising  Martha's  dialogue  for 
her,  from  her  amazement  at  seeing  the  box  back,  down  to  the 
colossal  climax,  till  the  mere  idea  had  them  both  rolling  about  in 
helpless  quiverings  and  explosions.  Nor  could  Will,  though  he 
said  he'd  be  danged  if  he'd  stuff  himself  in  again,  and  groused  he'd 


550  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

got  cramp  in  every  limb,  altogether  escape  the  contagion,  while 
to  witness  the  roisterous  merriment  of  the  two  hairy  ancients 
gave  Jinny  such  an  exquisite  joy  of  life  as  not  even  her  lover's 
first  kiss  had  given  her.  Such  an  assurance  streamed  from  it  of 
life  being  sound  at  the  centre  :  a  bubbling  fount  of  sweetness 
and  love  and  innocent  laughter.  It  wiped  out  for  ever  the 
memory  of  that  morbid  doubt  of  the  nature  of  things  that  had 
assailed  her  as  she  sat  under  the  gaze  of  the  stuffed  owl  in  Mrs. 
Pennymole's  cottage,  the  day  of  the  rape  of  Methusalem.  Tears 
welled  through  her  smiles  as  Will  at  last  bade  his  father  lend  a 
hand  in  transporting  the  box  to  the  waiting  cart.  It  m^ust 
return  to  Frog  Farm,  even  if  he  was  not  inside  it. 

"  And  I  don't  believe  there  ever  were  any  provisions.  Jinny," 
he  grinned,  with  an  afterthought. 

"  Oh  yes,  there  are,"  said  Jinny.  "  Look  !  And  a  bottle  of 
brandy  too  !  " 

"  You  dear  !  "  he  began,  but  Jinny  cut  him  short  with  warning 
signals.  The  sudden  revelation  of  their  relations  might  undo  all 
the  good  of  the  spree,  by  reviving  her  grandfather's  apprehensions 
of  desertion.  Indeed,  when  the  hurly-burly  was  over,  he  could 
scarcely  fail  to  ask  himself  what  this  sportive  intimacy  of  the 
young  couple  portended,  especially  as  he  had  even  in  the  past 
suspected  the  answer.  The  truth  must  be  broken  to  him 
cautiously,  and  with  that  reflection  came  the  chilling  remembrance 
that  all  this  hubbub  and  laughter  had  solved  nothing,  that  the 
situation,  though  superficially  eased,  was  essentially  the  same  as 
before,  that  the  problem  had  only  been  postponed.  Putting  Will 
in  a  box  was  not  keeping  him  in  England.  He  would  probably 
have  to  sail  just  the  same,  and  the  pain  of  parting  be  borne 
afresh,  and  even  if  he  remained,  she  could  not  abandon  her 
grandfather.  But  she  shook  off  these  thoughts.  Enough  for 
the  moment  that  Will  was  hers  again. 

"  Oi've  never  laughed  so  much  since  Oi  seen  that  Andraa  at 
Che'msford  Fair  the  day  Oi  fust  met  Annie  !  "  said  her  grand- 
father, wiping  his  eyes,  as  she  set  off  on  her  delayed  round,  with 
Will  at  her  side,  and  Caleb  and  the  box  in  the  cart,  and  Nip 
bounding  like  mad  along  the  muddy  road. 

But  it  was  impossible  to  keep  Caleb  in  mind.  Will  was  too  im- 
patient and  too  famished  a  lover  for  that,  and  it  is  not  often  that 
you  sit  at  your  sweetheart's  side  when  you  ought  to  be  whirling 
towards   the  Antipodes.     Caleb   could   not   help   seeing  happy 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  551 

backs,  circumplicated — in  the  more  solitary  roads — by  arms,  and 
the  hope,  first  implanted  by  Martha,  that  he  would  be  relieved  of 
Will  after  all,  and  in  so  desirable  a  fasliion,  grew  more  and  more 
assured,  though  the  occasional  rigidity  of  the  bodies  under  obser- 
vation unsettled  him  afresh. 

"  Aren't  you  late  for  the  coach  ?  "  he  heard  Bundock's  voice 
inquire  at  one  of  these  prim  intervals. 

"  No,  too  early  !  "  laughed  WiU. 

"But  you're  going  the  wrong  way  !  " 

"  The  first  time  I've  gone  right  !  "  said  Will,  and  with  magni- 
ficent indiscretion  he  turned  and  kissed  Jinny. 

"  Oh  dear  !  "  Jinny  gasped,  red  as  fire.  "  It'll  be  all  over 
Chipstone  by  to-night." 

"  I  wanted  the  banns  proclaimed  as  soon  as  possible,"  he  said, 
unabashed. 

Then  they  became  aware  of  a  curious  gulping  sound  behind 
them  which  drowned  even  Methusalem's  tick-tacks.  They  turned 
their  heads.  Caleb — convinced  at  last— had  buried  his  face  in 
the  famous  "  muckinger  "  mentioned  between  them  only  that 
morning. 

"  What's  up,  dad  ?  "  cried  Will  sympathetically.  "  Got  a 
toothache  ?  " 

"  It's  the  joy  at  you  and  Jinny,"  he  sobbed  apologetically. 
"  And  to  think  that  some  folk  are  near-sighted  and  can't  see 
God,  their  friend." 

"  Meaning  me,  dad  ?  "  asked  Will,  not  untouchedo 

"  Meanin'  mother,  Willie.  Lord,  what  a  state  Oi  left  her  in — 
ail  blarin'  and  lamentation.  'Have  faith,'  Oi  says  to  her.  But 
Oi'm  af eared  she's  got  too  much  brains  and  book-larnin'  !  " 

"  Oh,  T  say,  dad  !  "  laughed  Will.  "Wouldn't  Bundock  like 
to  hear  that  ?  " 

"  Bundock's  of  the  same  opinion,"  said  Caleb,  meaning  the 
bed-ridden  Bundock.  "  '  Few  texts  and  much  faith,'  he  says  to 
me  once.  And  faith  cometh  by  hearin',  don't  one  of  'em  tell  us  ? 
Singafies  the  ear  can't  take  hold  of  a  clutter  o'  texts." 

"  Oh,  but  surely  Mrs.  Flynt  has  faith  ?  "  protested  Jinny. 

"  She's  too  taken  up  with  other  folks'  faith,"  Caleb  maintained 
stoutly.  "  Wanted  Mrs.  Skindle  to  break  bread  with  her  and 
look  for  the  New  Jerusalem — she  ain't  found  much  of  a  Jeru- 
salem, poor  lone  widder.  And  wanted  to  baptize  that  Flip 
gen'leman,  but  he  never  would  come  to  the  scratch.     And  tried 


552  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

her  tricks  and  texts  on  your  poor  old  Gran'fer,  she  let  out.  But 
when  it  comes  to  takin'  a  sorrow  from  the  hand  of  God,  her 
friend,  she  sets  and  yowls  like  a  heathen  what  runs  naked  in  the 
wilderness.  Oi'm  done  with  that  Christy  Dolphin  stuff — it  don't 
bring  the  peace  of  God,  and  Oi'll  tell  her  sow  to  her  head  the  next 
time  she's  at  me  to  be  a  Jew  !  " 

He  mopped  up  the  remains  of  his  tears.  "  And  same  as  Oi 
did  jine  the  Sin  agog,"  he  added  pensively,  "  hew  do  Oi  know 
she  wouldn't  goo  on  gooin'  forrard  ?  " 

IX 

If,  in  the  very  heart  of  the  romp  at  Blackwater  Hall,  Jinny's 
insight  could  perceive  that  this  reconciliation  of  her  tv/o  males 
(or  her  two  mules  as  she  called  them  to  herself)  had  left  her 
marriage  problem  unsolved,   still  more  did  afterthought  bring 
home  the  sad  truth.     There  w^as  no  way  of  leaving  the  old  man, 
no  way  of  adding  Will  to  the  household.     The  latter  alternative 
she  never  even  suggested.     It  would  bring  her  husband  into 
public   contempt   to   be   thus   absolutely   swallowed  up   by   the 
female  carrier,   and  supported  as  in  a  poorhouse.     So  far  off 
seemed  the  possibility  of  marriage  that   the   Gaffer  was  con- 
siderately left  in  ignorance  of  the  engagement — the  only  man  in 
a  radius  of  leagues  from  whom  it  was  hidden,  though  Will  was 
constantly  about  the  cottage,  having  supplanted  poor  Ravens  as 
a  house  repairer.     But  ever  since  the  Gaffer  had  clapped  him  in 
the  trunk — and  the  old  m^an  had  forgotten  he  was  not  the  first 
to  do  so — his  affections  had  passed  to  the  victim  of  his  humour, 
and  he  often  recalled  it  to  Will  with  grins  and  guffaws  as  they 
sat  over  their  beer.     "  Ye  thought  to  git  over  Dani.el  Quarles," 
he  would  chuckle,  poking  him  in  the  ribs,-  "  but  ye  got  to  come 
in  on  your  hands  and  knees  !     Ho,  ho,  ho  !  "     He  seemed  to 
imagine  Will  called  on  purpose  to  be  thus  twitted  with  his  defeat, 
though  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  privation  of  his  pipe  was  a  great 
grievance  to  the  young  man,  and  supplied  a  new  obstacle  to  his 
taking  up  his  quarters  there  as  son-in-law.     But  outwardly  Will 
had  fallen  into  Jinny's  way  of  humouring  the  old  tyrant,  and 
this  parade  of  affection  rather  shocked  her,  for  she  felt  that  Will 
was  more  interested  in  the  veteran's  death  than  in  his  life.     Once 
when,   recalling  the  delectable  memory,   the   Gaffer  remarked, 
"  Lucky  ye  ain't  as  bonkka  as  Sidrach,  Oi  count  they  had  to 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  553 

make  him  a  extra-sized  coffin,"  she  caught  an  almost  ghoulish 
gleam  in  her  lover's  eyes.  He  had  indeed  lugubriously  drawn 
her  attention  to  a  paragraph  in  the  paper  saying  that  six  thousand 
centenarians  had  been  counted  in  Europe  in  the  last  half-century. 
Evidently  the  age  of  man  was  rising  dangerously,  he  implied. 
The  worst  of  it  was  that  Jinny  herself,  though  she  would  have 
fought  passionately  lor  the  patriarch's  life,  found  shadowy 
speculations  as  to  the  length  of  his  span  floating  up  to  her  mind 
and  needing  to  be  sternly  stamped  under.  For  she  had  told 
Will  definitely  that  so  long  as  her  grandfather  lived,  she  could 
neither  marry  nor  leave  England.  Gloomily  he  cited  Old  Parr 
— he  seemed  to  have  become  an  authority  on  centenarians — who 
had  clung  to  existence  till  152.  "At  that  rate  1  shall  be  over 
eighty,"  he  calculated  cheerlessly. 

"  Oh,  it  isn't  very  likely  1  "  she  consoled  him. 

"  Well,  it's  lucky  we  aren't  living  before  the  Flood,  that's  all 
I  can  say,"  he  grumbled.  "  Fancy  waiting  six  hundred  years 
or  so  !  " 

"  I  wish  we  were  living  before  our  flood,"  she  said.  "  Then 
you'd  have  your  livelihood." 

"  And  what  would  have  been  the  good  of  that  without  you  ? 
You'd  have  stuck  to  your  grandfather  just  the  same." 

No,  there  was  no  way  out.  Australia  resurged,  black  and 
menacing,  and  finally  she  even  wrote  herself  to  the  London 
agents  about  his  ship,  consoled  only  by  the  entire  supervision  of 
his  wardrobe  and  the  famous  trunk.  And  the  only  w^edding  that 
followed  on  their  engagement  was  Elijah's.  For — according  to 
Bundock's  father — till  that  had  become  certain,  Blanche  had 
refused  to  marry,  despite  the  calling  of  her  banns.  "  I  didn't 
think  that  a  man  who  once  aspired  to  me  could  ever  keep  com- 
pany with  a  common  carrier,"  was  her  final  version  to  Miss 
Gentry.  "  It  shows  how  right  you  were  to  spurn  him,"  said 
that  sympathetic  spinster,  who  had  transferred  her  adoration  of 
the  Beautiful  from  the  faithless  Cleopatra  to  the  clinging  Blanche, 
and  figured  at  the  altar  in  her  now  habitual  role  of  bridesmaid. 

And  it  was  on  that  very  wedding-day — so  closely  does  tragedy 
tread  on  the  sock  of  comedy — that  poor  Uncle  Liliiwhyte  fell 
asleep  in  a  glorious  hope  of  resurrection.  Jinny  had  not  sus- 
pected the  imminence  of  his  last  moments  till  the  evening  before, 
though  she  and  Will  had  paid  him  several  visits  at  his  now 
weathertight   hut.     But  she  had  become  rather  alarmed  about 


554  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

him,  and  returning  from  her  round  one  Tuesday,  she  set  off 
alone,  as  soon  as  supper  was  over.  Will  had  seen  sufficient  of 
her  during  the  day,  and  it  was  understood  he  was  to  give  his 
mother  his  company  that  evening,  for  Martha  had  fallen  into  a 
more  distressful  state  than  ever.  "  Will's  got  to  go  just  the 
same,"  she  kept  moaning  when  Jinny  came,  "  and  Flynt  vows 
he'll  never  be  baptized  into  the  Ecclesia,  and  turns  round  and 
tells  me  I  lack  faith.  Me,  who've  learnt  him  all  the  religion 
he  knows  !  " 

There  w^as  a  full  moon  as  Jinny  set  out  with  a  little  basket  for 
the  invalid.  Nip  trotted  behind  her,  and  the  trees  and  bushes 
cast  black  trunks  and  masses  across  her  path,  almost  like  solid 
stumbling-blocks.  The  bare  elms  and  poplars  rose  in  rigid 
beauty  in  the  cold  starry  evening.  Death  was  far  from  her 
thoughts  till  she  reached  the  hut  and  saw  the  sunken  cheeks  in 
their  tangle  of  hair  illumined  weirdly  from  the  stove,  which  lay 
so  close  to  the  patriarch's  hand  he  could  replenish  it  from  his 
bed  of  sacks. 

"  Just  in  time,  Jinny  !  "  he  said  joyfully.  "  Oi  was  af eared 
you  wouldn't  be."  His  excitement  set  him  coughing  and, 
frightened,  she  knelt  and  put  her  jug  of  tea  to  his  lips. 

"  There  !  Don't  talk  nonsense  !  "  she  said,  as  a  faint  colour 
returned  to  his  face. 

He  shook  his  head.     "  'Tis  the  tarn  of  the  worms  at  last." 

"  Not  for  twenty  years.     Look  at  Gran'fer." 

"  Oi  can't  grudge  'em,"  he  persisted.     "  Oi've  took  many  a 
fish  with  'em,  and  Oi've  been  about  the  woods  from  a  buoy-oy, 
master  of  beast  and  bird  and  snake,  and  Oi  know'd  Oi'd  be 
catched  myself  one  day.     And  that's  onny  fair,  ain't  it  ?  " 
.     "  Don't  talk  like  that — it's  horrible." 

"  Ye're  too  softy-hearted,  Jinny,  or  ye  wouldn't  be  here 
fussin'  over  the  poor  ole  man  in  the  trap.  And  ef  ye'd  been 
more  of  a  sport,  ye'd  ha'  understood  it's  all  a  grand  ole  game. 
Catch-me-ef-yoU'Can^  Oi  calls  it." 

"  It's  dreadful,  I  think — the  hawks  and  weasels  eating  the 
little  birds." 

"  Then  why  do  the  little  birds  sing  so  ?  Tell  me  that !  It's 
all  fun,  Oi  tell  ve,  and  they're  havin'  it  theirselves  with  the  flies 
and  the  worms.  Take  your  Nip  now.  [Nip,  hearing  his  name, 
wagged  his  tail.]  Oi've  seen  that  animal,  what  looks  so  peaceful 
squattin'  there  by  the  fire,  stand  a-roarin'  like  when  you  shuts 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  555 

the  flap  o'  the  stove  time  he  tries  to  git  at  a  rat-hole.  Ten  men 
couldn't  howd  him." 

'•  He's  never  got  a  rat  anyhow,"  said  Jinny  with  satisfaction. 

"  More  shame  to  his  breed.  Oi  count  he's  frighted  away  my 
fox  all  the  same.  There's  one  what  comes  and  looks  in  at  me 
every  evenin'  jast  like  Nip  there,  onny  wild  about  the  eyes 
like.  Oi  reckoned  lie'd  be  squattin'  there  to-night  for  a  warm,  too, 
friendly-like,  but  he'll  find  both  on  us  cowld  soon,  the  lire  and 
me."     And  a  racking  spasm  of  coughing  accented  his  prognostic. 

"  You  mustn't  talk  like  that.  You  mustn't  talk  at  all.  I'll 
send  Dr.  Mint  to-morrow." 

He  raised  himself  convulsively  on  his  sacking,  throwing  off  the 
rags  and  tags  that  covered  him,  and  revealing  the  grimy  shirt 
and  trousers  that  formed  his  bed-costume.  His  grey  hair 
streamed  wildly,  almost  reaching  the  bolster.  "  Ef  ye  send  me 
a  doctor,"  he  threatened,  "  Oi'll  die  afore  he  gits  here  I  " 

"  Do  lie  down."     She  pressed  him  towards  his  bolster. 

"  Oi  won't  take  no  doctors'  stuff,"  he  gurgled,  as  his  head 
sank  back. 

"  But  why  ?  "  she  said,  covering  him  up  with  his  fusty  bed- 
clothes.    "  You're  not  one  of  us,  surely  i  " 

"  A  Peculiar  ?  Noa,  thank  the  Lord.  Oi  told  ye  Oi  don't 
believe  nawthen  of  all  they  religions.  Git  over  me,  the  whole 
thing." 

"  But  if  you  won't  have  medicine,  you  must  pray,  like  we  do." 

"  Ye  don't  catch  me  doin'  the  one  ne  yet  the  tother.  Oi 
count  Oi  can  git  along  vvdthout  'em  as  much  as  the  other  critters 
in  the  wood.     They  don't  have  neither." 

"  Yes,  they  do — at  least  Nip  and  Methusalem  have  medicine 
when  they're  sick.     I  give  it  'em  myself." 

"  Oi  reckon  that's  what  makes  'em  sick — relyin'  on  Skindles 
and  sech.  Oi  never  seen  a  stoat  nor  a  squirrel  take  physic,  and 
ye  don't  want  nawthfen  livelier,  and  Oi  never  seen  a  animal  goo 
down  on  his  knees,  unless  'twas  a  hoss  what  slipped.    He,  he,  he  !  " 

When  the  cough  into  which  his  gaggle  passed  was  quieted, 
Jinny  reminded  him  sternly  that  men  were  not  animals,  that  he 
had  an  immortal  soul,  and  she  asked  whether  he  would  see 
Mr.  Fallow  or  one  of  the  various  chapel  ministers.  That  proved 
the  most  agitating  question  of  all. 

He  sat  up  again,  his  face  working  in  terror.  "  None  o'  that, 
Oi  tell  ye.     Oi  ain't  afeared  o'  the  old  black  'un.     He'll  end  all 


556  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

my  pains,  though  Oi  ain't  tired  o'  life  even  with  'em — no,  not  by 
a  hundred  year.  But  do  ye  don't  come  scarin'  me  with  your 
heavens  and  hells,  for  Oi  don't  want  to  believe  in  'em." 

"  But  I  remember  your  saying  once,  we've  got  to  have  one  or 
the  other." 

"  And  Oi  told  ye  Oi  misHkes  'em  both." 

"  Not  really  ?     You  wouldn't  really  dislike  heaven." 

He  shuddered.  *'  Lord  save  me  from  it  1  Oi've  thought  a 
mort  lately  about  that  Charley  Mott — Oi  used  to  see  him  drunk 
with  his  mates — and  ef  he's  in  heaven  among  they  parsons  and 
angels,  Oi  warrant  he's  the  most  miserable  soul  alive." 

"  Lie  down  !  I  oughtn't  to  have  let  you  talk  !  "  she  said,  so 
shocked  that  she  charitably  supposed  his  wits  were  going.  This 
apprehension  was  enhanced  when,  just  as  her  hand  had  pressed 
his  relaxing  form  back  to  his  bolster,  she  felt  him  grow  rigid 
again  with  an  impulse  so  violent  that  she  was  jerked  backwards. 

"  Where's  my  wits  ?  "  he  exclaimed  in  odd  congruity  with  her 
thought.     "  Oi've  nigh  forgot  the  teapot !  " 

She  hastened  to  offer  again  the  half-sipped  jug,  which  she  had 
stood  by  the  stove.     He  waved  it  away. 

"  Not  that !     Gimme  the  spade  !  " 

"  The  spade  ?  " 

"  Ay,  it  stands  in  the  corner — Oi  ain't  used  it  since  my  old 
lurcher  died.  D'ye  think  he's  in  heaven — Rover — and  all  they 
rats  we  digged  up  together  ?  " 

"  You're  not  going  to  dig  up  a  rat  ?  "  she  said  in  horror. 

"  No  fear.  But  Oi  won't  have  nobody  else  ferret  it  out."  And 
from  his  bed  he  tried  to  shovel  away  the  earth  near  the  stove. 
But  his  strength  failed.  She  took  his  spade.  "  I'll  do  it. 
What  is  it  ?  " 

"  'Tis  in  the  earth,"  he  panted,  "  like  Oi'll  be.  And  Oi  reckon 
Oi'd  as  soon  be  buried  here  as  anywheres." 

She  turned  faint.     Did  he  mean  her  to  dig  his  grave  ? 

"  This  isn't  consecrated  ground,"  she  said  feebly. 

"  Oi  count  it's  got  as  lovely  a  smell  as  the  churchyard  earth," 
he  said.  "  But  let  'em  bury  me  where  they  will,  so  long  as  Oi 
don't  wake  up.     Ye  ain't  diggin'.  Jinny." 

Mystified  and  trembling,  and  wishing  she  had  not  come 
without  Will,  she  stuck  the  spade  in  deeper  and  threw  up  the 
clods.  Set  her  teeth  as  she  might,  she  could  not  shake  off  the 
thought   that  she  was  digging  his  grave,   and   they  began  to 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  557 

chatter  despite  the  warmth  from  the  stove.  The  lurid  glow- 
streaming  from  it  seemed  sinister  in  the  darkness  of  the  window- 
less  hut,  and  she  paused  to  let  in  a  streak  of  moonlight  through 
a  gap  in  the  door.  But  the  night  outside  in  its  vastness  and 
under  its  blue  glamour  seemed  even  more  frightening,  and  the 
cold  blast  that  blew  in  made  the  ancient  cough  again.  She 
reclosed  the  door,  and  with  trembling  spade  resumed  her  strange 
task.     Suddenly  her  blade  struck  a  metallic  object. 

"  That's  it  !  "  he  cried  gleefully.  "  And  ye  wanted  to  put 
boards  over  it  !  " 

More  mystified  than  ever,  she  drew  up  a  heavy  old  teapot  of 
Britannia  metal — never  had  she  handled  such  a  weighty  pot. 

"  Pour  it  out  1     Pour  it  out !  "  he  chuckled. 

She  held  the  spout  over  her  jug,  which  made  him  laugh  till  he 
nearly  died.  But  by  thumping  his  shoulders  she  got  his  breath 
back.  She  understood  now  what  moved  his  mirth,  for  though 
nothing  had  issued  from  the  spout,  the  lid  had  burst  open  and 
a  rain  of  gold  pieces  had  come  spinning  and  rolling  all  over  the 
hut.  It  seemed  like  the  stories  the  old  people  told  of  the 
treasures  of  gnomes  and  pixies.  There  seemed  hundreds  of 
them,  glittering  and  twirling. 

"All  for  you,  Jinny,"  he  panted  with  his  recovered  breath. 
"  All  for  you." 

"  Why,  wherever  did  you  get  all  this  ?  "  she  replied,  dropping 
on  her  knees  to  gather  the  shimmering  spilth. 

"  That's  all  honest.  Jinny,  don't  be  scat.  'Tis  the  pennies 
Oi've  put  together,  man  and  buo-oy  this  sixty  year  and  more." 

"  But  what  for  ?  "  she  gasped. 

"  For  you.     And  fowrpence  or  fi'pence  a  day  tots  up." 

"  No,  I  mean  why  did  you  do  it  ?  "  Her  brain  refused  to 
take  in  the  idea  that  all  this  fabulous  wealth  was  hers.  "  Why 
didn't  you  live  more  comfortable — why  didn't  you  get  another 
cottage  ?  " 

"  Oi  ain't  never  been  so  happy  as  since  Farmer  tarned  me 
out.  To  lay  on  the  earth,  that's  what  Oi  wanted  all  my  life — 
onny  Oi  dedn't  know  it." 

"  Then  what  was  the  good  of  the  money  ?  " 

A  crafty  look  came  into  the  hollow  eyes  and  overspread  the 
wan  features.  "  They'd  have  had  me,  they  guardians,  ef  Oi 
dedn't  have  money.  Oi  wasn't  a-gooin'  to  die  in  the  poorhouse 
Hke  my  feyther,  time  they  sold  him  up.     Ef  ye  got  the  brads. 


5SS  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

they  can't  touch  ye.  Do,  the  Master  'ould  git  into  trouble.  They 
put  mother  and  me  sep'rit  from  feyther,  and  when  Oi  seen  her 
cryin'  Oi  swore  in  my  liddle  heart  Oi'd  die  sooner  than  stay 
there  or  tarn  'prentice.  Oi' dropped  through  a  window  the 
night  o'  feyther's  funeral — for  the  Master  had  thrashed  me — but 
Oi'd  promised  mother  Oi'd  come  back  for  her,  and  'twarn't 
many  year  afore  she  was  livin'  with  me  upright  in  the  cottage. 
Happen  you  seen  her,  though  she  never  seen  you." 

"  Yes,  I  know,"  said  Jinny  softly.     "  She  was  blind." 

"  Cried  her  eyes  out,  to  my  thinkin'.  But  Oi  says  to  her 
marnin'  and  night,  'Cheer  up,  mother,'  Oi  says,  '  so  long  as  we've 
got  the  dubs,  they  can't  touch  us,  and  ef  they  parish  gents  tries 
to  lay  hands  on  me,  they'll  git  such  a  clumsy  thump  with  the 
teapot  they'll  know  better  next  time.'  She  never  seen  the  teapot, 
mother  dedn't,  but  she  used  to  waggle  her  fingers  about  in  it 
and  laugh  Hke  billy-o." 

Jinny  felt  nearer  weeping  as  she  culled  these  spoils  of  a  life- 
time. Many  of  the  coins  were  curious ;  mintage  of  an  earlier 
reign.  She  was  peering  in  a  cobwebbed  corner  when  the  barking 
of  Nip  as  well  as  a  familiar  footstep  in  the  clearing  announced  a 
welcome  arrival.  How  glad  she  was  Will  had  not  been  able  to 
keep  away  !  And  then  suddenly — at  last — came  the  realization 
of  her  riches,  of  the  solution  of  her  financial  problem  ! 

"  Quick !  Quick !  "  whispered  the  old  man  hoarsely,  and 
signed  to  her  to  hide  the  teapot.  To  soothe  him  she  put  it 
swiftly  in  her  basket. 

"  You're  sure  there's  nobody  else  ought  to  have  it  ?  "  she 
asked  anxiously. 

"  Oi  ain't  got  no  friend  'cept  you  and  the  fox.  And  ye  don't 
catch  him  in  the  poorhouse.  But  Oi'U  die  happy,  knowin'  as 
Oi've  saved  you  from  it.  Don't  let  'em  come  in  !  "  he  gasped,  as 
a  tapping  began. 

"  It's  only  young  Mr.  Flynt." 

"  Willie,  d'ye  mean  ?  " 

She  blushed  in  the  friendly  obscurity.  "  He's  come  to  see  mc 
home." 

"  He  mustn't  come  in  !  " 

"  ril  tell  him." 

She  set  down  the  basket  and  went  out  into  the  blue  night.  It 
was  no  longer  terrifying.  Will  with  his  ash  stick  seemed  a 
match  for  all  the  powers  of  darkness.     But  she  drew  back  from 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  559 

his  kiss.  Death  was  loo  near.  In  whispers  she  explained  the 
situation,  forgetting  even  to  mention  the  gold.  "  I  oughtn't  to 
leave  him — he  oughtn't  to  die  alone." 

"  Nonsense,  sweetheart.  You  can't  stay  all  night  with  a  dirty 
old  lunatic  !  " 

"  Don't  talk  so  unchristiarily,  Will.     You  don't  deserve !  " 

But  she  shut  her  lips.  She  could  not  go  now  into  the  happiness 
the  "  dirty  old  lunatic  "  was  bringing  them. 

"  Make  him  up  a  good  fire  and  say  you'll  be  back  first  thing 
in  the  morning.     I'll  come  and  take  you.     There  !  " 

"  Couldn't — couldn't  you  stay  with  him,  Will  ?  " 

"  Me  ?  You  said  he  wouldn't  have  me  !  And  I  haven't  got 
enough  baccy  on  me." 

She  went  back  tentatively.  She  found  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  lying 
on  his  back  on  his  sacks  with  closed  eyes,  and  there  was  blood 
on  the  bolster.  The  earth  had  been  shovelled  in  again  and  the 
soil  flattened  tidily  with  the  back  of  the  spade.  The  superfluous 
precaution — automatic  effect  of  lifelong  habit — had  evidently 
cost  him  dear. 

"  He  can  come  in  now,"  he  said  feebly. 

"  But  he  doesn't  want  anything,"  she  explained.  "  You  lie 
still." 

"  Oi'd  like  him  to  come."  She  went  softly  to  the  door  and 
called. 

"  Here  I  am,  uncle  !  "  cried  WiU  cheerily. 

"  'Tain't  you  Oi  want.  But  happen  ef  your  mother  'ud  come 
and  talk  tilings  over " 

"  My  mother  ?  "  said  Will,  startled.  Martha,  he  knew,  would 
have  the  same  repugnance  as  he  to  this  fecldess,  grimy,  impossible 
creature  :  an  aversion  which  even  the  wasted  features  could  not 
counteract. 

.  "  It  don't  seem  to  git  over  she,"  he  explained,  "  but  Oi  never 
could  hear  proper,  bein'  at  the  keyhole  in  a  manner  o'  speakin'. 
But  ef  she'd  come  and  explain !  " 

"  Yes,  she  will,"  said  Jinny.     "  She  must,  Will." 

"  I'U  tell  her,"  he  murmured. 

"  He'll  bring  her  in  the  morning,"  she  promised  emphatically. 
"  You  take  a  little  more  tea  now  and  get  to  sleep."  She  covered 
him  up  carefully  and  stuck  a  great  log  in  the  stove. 

"  Do  ye  take  that  fowlin'-piece,  young  Flynt,"  he  said,  opening 
his  eyes.     "  And  be  careful— it's  loaded." 


S6o  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  Thanks,  I'll  take  it  in  the  morning." 

"  And  there's  the  coppers  and  silver,  Jinny.  That's  at  the 
bottom  o'  the  sack  Oi'm  on.     And  old  tradesmen's  tokens  too." 

"  In  the  morning — you  go  to  sleep  now,"  she  said  tenderly. 
But  she  still  lingered,  reluctant  to  leave  him,  and  was  very  relieved 
when  Ravens  (now  become  a  woodman  with  an  adze)  looked  in 
to  see  the  old  man,  and,  unembittered  by  the  sight  of  the  lovers, 
consented  to  pass  the  night  in  the  hut  he  had  mended. 


X 

Swinging  home  through  the  wood,  through  aisles  flooded  only 
with  moonlight,  the  young  lovers  soon  left  the  thought  of  death 
behind  them.  Indeed  from  the  hut  itself  there  had  soon  come 
following  them  the  careless  strains  of  the  incurable  caroUer  : 

"  'T/j  my  delight  of  a  shiny  night 
In  the  season  of  the  year?'* 

"  What  a  hefty  basket !  "  said  Will  at  last.  "  Whatever  have 
you  been  carrying  the  old  codger  ?  " 

"  It's  what  I'm  carrying  off,"  she  laughed.  "  But  give  it  me, 
if  it's  too  much  for  your  poor  arm." 

"  It's  not  so  heavy  as  my  box,"  he  smiled. 

"  But  it  saves  carrying  that,"  she  said  happily. 

"  How  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  That's  your  farm  in  there — your  English  farm !  Australia 
is  off."  She  enjoyed  his  obvious  fear  that  the  scene  in  the  hut 
had  been  too  much  for  her  brain.  "  Goose  !  "  she  cried.  "  Goose 
with  the  golden  eggs.     Just  take  a  peep." 

"  There's  only  your  jug  and  teapot."  He  was  more  mystified 
than  ever. 

But  her  happiness  waned  again  when  the  riddle  was  read. 

"  You  surely  don't  expect  me  to  pocket  your  money,"  he  said, 
as  soon  as  his  slower  brain  had  taken  in  the  situation. 

"  Oh,  Will !     Surely  what  is  mine  is  yours  !  " 

"  Not  at  all.     What  is  mine  is  yours." 

"  But  that's  what  I  said." 

"  Don't  turn  and  twist — I  know  you're  cleverer  than  me." 

Her  hand  sought  his.    "  Don't  let  us  have  a  storm  in  a  teapot !  " 

But  he  rumbled  on.  "  With  all  my  worldly  goods  I  thee  endow 
— it's  the  man  says  that." 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  561 

"  You've  been  reading  the  marriage  service." 

"  And  how  would  you  know  it,  if  you  hadn't  ?  " 

That  suspended  the  debate  on  a  kiss.  "  You  see  I'd  be  almost 
as  bad  as  poor  Charley  Mott,"  he  pointed  out. 

"  I  see,"  she  said  humbly.  Indeed  she  felt  herself  so  much  a 
part  of  him  now  that  she  wondered  how  she  could  have  failed 
to  look  at  it  from  his  point  of  view.  Her  defeat  of  his  coach — 
under  Providence — had  humiliated  him  enough.  To  have  turned 
suddenly  into  an  heiress  was  an  aggravation  of  her  success  ;  now 
to  make  him  appear  a  fortune-hunter  would  be  the  last  straw. 

"  But  couldn't  I  buy  the  farm  and  you  rent  it  of  me  ?  "  she 
ventured,  with  a  memory  of  Hezekiah  Bidlake. 

"  Everybody  would  think  just  the  same " 

'*'  Well,  but  somewhere  else — where  nobody  knows  us ?  " 

"  You  wouldn't  come  somewhere  else — not  till  I'm  eighty  !  " 

"  Don't  be  absurd  !  Anyhow  you'll  look  beautiful  with  a 
white  beard." 

"  Why  not  get  him  a  minder  with  the  money  ?  Then  we 
could  go  to  Australia  together." 

"  Leave  him  to  a  stranger  !  He'd  die.  But  so  long  as  the 
farm  was  in  England,  it  wouldn't  be  so  bad,  even  if  I  couldn't 
come  just  yet." 

He  did  not  answer,  and  as  they  walked  on  silently,  her  day- 
dreams resurged,  her  nipped  buds  began  bursting  into  wonderful 
flower.  They  parted  at  her  door  without  further  reference  to 
money  questions,  but  her  face  was  brimming  with  happiness  as 
the  pot  with  guineas. 

In  that  rosy  mood — when  her  grandfather,  nid-nodding  over 
the  hearth,  roused  at  her  return — she  could  not  refrain  from 
pouring  out  her  teapot  on  the  table,  and  changing  his  grumbles 
at  her  absence  into  squeaks  of  delight.  She  meant  to  pour  out 
her  story  too,  but  he  cut  her  short. 

"  That's  mine  !  "  he  cried,  exultant.  "  That's  the  gold  Sidrach 
brought  me  !  " 

"  No,  no,  Gran'fer.     That  comes  from !  " 

"  But  there's  the  wery  spade  guineas  !  "  He  dabbled  his 
claws  in  the  coins. 

"  Oh,  is  that  what  they  are  ?     But  there's  heads  of  Victoria, 


too." 


"  That's  what  he  saved  in  Babylon.     Dedn't  Oi  say  as  he  died 
warrum  ?  " 

2  N 


562  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"  But  you  must  listen,  Gran'fer.     Uncle  Lilliwhyte "  she 

recapitulated  the  story. 

"  They're  mine  anyways !  "  He  scooped  them  up  in  his 
skinny  palms  and  let  them  fall  into  the  pot  mth  a  voluptuous 
clang.     "  Ye  gits  quite  enough  out  o'  my  biznus." 

This  seemed  so  exactly  the  reverse  of  Will's  attitude  that  she 
found  herself  smiling  ruefully  at  the  way  she  was  caught  again 
between  her  "  two  mules."  But  she  could  not  thus  lose  her 
marriage-portion.  "  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  gave  them  to  me  for 
myself,"  she  said  firmly. 

"  And  don't  ye  owe  me  back  all  the  money  Oi  paid  when  your 
feyther  died  ?  " 

Jinny  was  taken  aback.     "  How  much  did  you  pay  ?  " 

"  Hunderds  and  hunderds.  Dedn't,  he'd  a-been  a  disgraced 
corpse,  and  your  mother  too." 

Jinny  was  silent.  The  Angel-Mother  seemed  rustling  overhead. 
The  Gaffer  closed  shutters  and  bolted  doors  with  rigorous  pre- 
cautions, and  hugging  the  teapot  to  his  bosom  stumbled  up  to 
bed.  Depressed  by  this  unexpected  seizure  of  her  windfall,  she 
found  herself  too  utterly  weary  after  her  long  day's  work  and 
excitement  to  open  the  shutters  again,  much  as  she  disliked  an 
airless  room  ;  she  had  scarcely  energy  to  pull  out  her  chest  of 
drawers.  For  a  few  minutes  she  watched  from  her  bed  the  blue 
flickering  flame  of  the  log,  then  knew  no  more  till  suddenly  she  saw 
above  the  dead  fire  a  monstrous  shadow  curling  over  the  chimney- 
piece  and  along  the  ceiling  :  in  another  instant  she  traced  it  to 
something  still  more  horrible — her  grandfather's  legless  trunk 
appearing  over  the  hearthstone,  with  his  nightlight  in  one  hand 
and  the  teapot  in  the  other.  The  rush-candle  shook  in  its  holed 
tin  cylinder  and  set  his  grisly  counterpart  dancing.  Jinny's  blood 
ran  cold.  Evidently  some  one  had  murdered  him  for  the  gold 
and  this  was  his  ghost.  Then  she  told  herself  it  was  one  of  her 
nightmares,  and  she  looked  around  for  Henry  Brougham,  Esq., 
to  clear  up  the  situation.  But  with  a  soft  thud  the  trunk  dropped 
as  through  a  trap-door  and  there  was  nothing  left  but  a  great 
glimmering  hole  where  the  hearthstone  should  have  been. 
Instantly  she  realized  that  it  was  only  a  secret  hiding-place  in 
which  her  magpie  of  a  grandfather  was  bestowing  the  treasure — 
yes,  there  was  the  hearthstone  slewed  round  as  on  a  pivot.  This 
must  be  that  old  smugglers'  storehouse  he  and  gossip  had  some- 
times hinted  at — with  perhaps  the  long  underground  passages  of 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  563 

ancient  legend,  reaching  to  Beacon  Chimneys,  nay,  to  the 
parsonage  itself. 

She  closed  her  eyes  carefully  as  his  shadow  heralded  his  re- 
ascent.  He  came  up  almost  as  noiselessly  as  that  giant  spectre, 
and  between  her  lids  she  saw  him  scrutinize  her.  Reassured  to 
see  his  shanks  again,  she  emitted  one  of  his  snores,  wondering 
whimsically  if  she  did  snore,  or  if  any  other  girl  had  ever  heard 
herself  snore,  and  a  smile  almost  broke  the  impassivity  of  her 
cheeks.  Satisfied  with  the  snore,  he  stooped  down  and  she  saw 
the  hearthstone  veer  back  to  its  place.  "  Well,  I  can  always  get 
it  when  I  want  it,"  she  thought  cheerfully,  as  his  slow  stockinged 
feet  bore  him  and  his  more  sinister  shadow  upstairs. 

For  some  time  she  lay  awake,  pondering  over  the  fate  of  her 
money,  which  seemed  like  Cleopatra's  to  be  "  in  bonds,"  and 
wondering  whether  poor  Uncle  Lilliwhyte  was  still  alive;  then 
everything  faded  into  a  vision  of  Mr.  Flippance  jogging  mario- 
nettes for  rugged  miners  who  poured  out  their  teapots  at  the 
box-office,  reducing  it  to  such  a  swamp  that  its  boxes  floated 
in  the  tea. 

At  breakfast,  finding  her  grandfather  abnormally  restless,  she 
asked  him  a  little  maliciously  if  he  had  slept  all  right. 

"  Oi'U  sleep  better  to-night,"  he  said,  and  chuckled  a  little. 
He  seemed  indeed  very  happy  at  having  his  treasure  so  well 
warded,  and  though  his  exuberance  was  alarming,  she  felt  that 
the  excitement  of  happiness  was  a  lesser  danger  than  that  long 
depression  of  penuriousness.  If  the  defeat  of  the  coach  had 
seemed  to  give  him  a  second  lease  of  life,  what  might  not  his  new 
wealth  do  for  him  ?  He  might  really  become  an  Old  Parr,  and 
poor  Will  be  kept  waiting  till  the  twentieth  century  ! 

It  was  thus  with  only  a  moderate  uneasiness  that  she  left  him, 
stealing  with  her  basket  to  the  rendezvous  at  the  hut.  In  the 
wood  she  met  Ravens  hurrying  to  find  breakfast,  and  he  sang 
out  that  Martha  and  WiH  had  relieved  him,  and  that  Uncle 
Lilliwhyte  was  better.  As  she  approached  the  clearing,  she  saw 
the  old  woman  come  out  of  the  hut  with  a  bottle  in  her  hand 
and  a  face  absolutely  transfigured.  The  whining,  peevish, 
latter-day  Martha  was  gone :  a  radiance  almost  celestial  illumined 
her  features — ^it  seemed  to  transcend  even  the  bonnet  and  to  rim 
it  with  a  halo.  This  was  a  woman  walking  not  on  the  dead 
dank  leaves  of  a  frost-grey  wood,  but  through  the  streets  of  the 
New  Jerusalem.     Behind  her  came  Will,  with  a  little  cynical 


564  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

smile  playing  about  his  mouth  till  he  espied  Jinny,  when  his 
face  took  on  the  same  ecstatic  glow  as  his  mother's.  Jinny 
could  not  but  feel  enkindled  in  her  turn  by  all  this  spiritual 
effulgence,  and  it  was  three  glorified  countenances  that  met  on 
this  March  morning. 

"  He's  broken  bread  with  me,"  breathed  Martha,  "  and  I've 
helped  him  put  on  the  Saving  Name."     She  displayed  her  bottle 
with  drops  of  water  beaded  on  the  mouth.     She  had  baptized —     , 
albeit  only  by  an  unavoidable  reversion  to  sprinkling — her  first 
convert.     The  dream  of  years  had  been  fulfilled  at  last,  and  the    j 
apostolic  triumph  had  lifted  her  beyond  humanity,   fired  her 
with  a  vision  in  which,  a  conquistador  of  faith,  she  was  to  turn    | 
all  Little  Bradmarsh,  nay,  Chipstone  itself,  into  one  vast  syna-    ;] 
gogue.     This  were  indeed  the  New  Jerusalem.     "  And  it  was    j 
Will  that  led  my  feet,"  she  said,  kissing  him  to  his  disconcert- 
ment.    "  And  go  where  he  may  now,  Jinny,  he  can't  take  that 
away  from  me.     And  I  shall  always  have  his  letter  to  inspire  me 
to  win  other  souls."     She  touched  the  left  side  of  her  bodice,  and 
poor  Jinny,  suddenly  reminded  that  her  grandfather  had  robbed 
her  of  her  last  chance  of  keeping  Will  in  England,  felt  envious 
of  Martha's  exalted  source  of  consolation. 

"  I've  got  to  go  now  and  cook  Flynt's  dinner,"  said  Martha. 
"  But  he  won't  have  much  appetite  for  it  if  he's  got  any  right 
feeling  left,  when  he  hears  that  another  man,  a  stranger,  has 
been  before  him  in  the  path  of  righteousness.  Maybe  you'll 
write  to  the  Lightstand,  Willie,  to  say  there's  a  new  brother  in 
Little  Bradmarsh." 

"  I'll  tell  'em  the  Ecclesia  has  doubled  its  membership,"  said 
Will,  with  a  faint  wink  at  Jinny,  to  which  the  girl  did  not  respond. 
*'  Do  you  think,  mother,"  he  asked  with  mock  seriousness,  "  the 
New  Jerusalem  will  come  down  in  Australia  same  as  here  ?  " 

"  Of  course,"  said  Martha. 

Again  Will  winked  at  Jinny.  But  she  frowned  and  shook  her 
head.  Her  study  of  Australia  had  instructed  her  sufficiently 
that  it  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  globe,  and  she  knew  that 
Will  was  having  fun  with  the  idea  of  the  golden  city  coming 
down  two  opposite  ways  at  once,  but  she  felt  it  criminal  to  break 
Martha's  mood,  and  indeed  was  not  certain  she  herself  under- 
stood how  the  Australians  escaped  falling  off  into  space.  Dis- 
couraged by  her  stern  face,  Will  murmured  he'd  put  his  mother 
on  the  road  and  be  back.     She  smiled  and  nodded  at  the  promise, 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  565 

but  her  heart  was  heavy  with  a  sense  of  inevitable  partings  as 
she  went  in  to  the  lingering  ancient. 

The  death-bed  conversion  was  evidently  a  success,  for  she 
found  him  almost  as  radiant  as  Martha,  though  with  a  more 
unearthly  light,  while  the  gleaming  as  of  dewdrops  on  his  dis- 
hevelled hair,  and  the  stains  of  damp  over  his  bolster  seemed  to 
convict  his  spiritual  preceptress  of  a  dangerous  recklessness. 
But  he  was  probably  beyond  saving  in  any  case,  Jinny  reflected, 
and  what  other  medicine  could  have  given  him  that  happy 
exaltation  ?  The  logs  roared  in  the  stove,  and  all  was  joy  and 
warmth  that  rimy  morning. 

"  Oi've  tarned  a  Christy  Dolphin  !  "  he  announced  jubilantly. 

"  Yes,  I'm  so  glad.     Drink  this  before  it  gets  cold." 

He  waved  it  away.     "  Oi  suspicioned  all  the  time  as  that  be  the 

right  religion.     No  hell  at  all,  ye  just  goos  to  sleep,  and  when 

the  New  Jerusalem  comes  down  for  they  righteous,  ye  don't 

git  up." 

"  TouUl  wake  up — you  and  your  mother,"  she  assured  him, 
standing  her  jug  by  the  stove. 

"  That's  what  Mrs.  Flynt  says.  *  Ye  ain't  done  no  harm,'  she 
says,  '  and  when  the  trumpet  blows  for  the  saints,  your  bones  will 
git  their  flesh  agen,  same  as  now.'  " 

There  was  little  enough  on  them  to  go  through  eternity  in,  she 
thought,  gazing  at  his  shrunken  arms,  which  he  had  left  outside 
the  coverings  in  repudiating  the  tea.  "  Won't  that  be  won- 
derful !  "  she  said,  the  tears  in  her  eyes. 

"  That'll  be  wamnerful  wunnerful,"  he  agreed.  "  That  fares  to 
be  what  Oi  calls  a  real  heaven — your  own  body,  not  a  sort  o' 
smoke-cloud  ye  wouldn't  know  was  you  ef  you  met  it,  your  own 
flesh  and  blood,  livin'  on  this  lovely  earth  with  the  birds  and  the 
winds  and  the  sun  and  the  water,  all  a-singin'  and  a-shinin'  for 
ever  and  ever.  And  no  bad  folks  ne  yet  angels  to  worrit  ye,  no 
liddle  boys  to  call  arter  ye — why  it's  just  ginnick  !  Oi  reckon 
Oi'll  choose  this  same  old  spot." 

"  Yes,  it's  a  lovely  spot,"  said  Jinny,  but  she  wondered  whether 
he  had  not  made  his  own  version  of  Martha's  New  Jerusalem, 
which  she  herself  had  always  understood  to  be  more  jewelled 
than  natural. 

"  Your  mother  will  be  able  to  see  it  too,"  she  added  gently,  as 
she  put  the  tea  to  his  lips. 

A  beautiful  smile  traversed  the  sunken  features.     But  suddenly 


566  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

a  frenzy  of  terror  swamped  it.  He  sat  up  with  a  jerk  that  dashed 
her  jug  to  the  stove,  shivering  it  into  fragments.  "  But  ef  Oi 
waked,  Oi'd  need  my  money  agen  !  "  he  shrilled. 

What  Jinny  always  remembered  most  vividly,  when  she 
recalled  this  tragic  moment,  was  the  red  lettering  on  the  sacks 
he  lay  on,  exposed  by  his  upright  posture. 

"  Gay,  Bird  &  Co.,  Colchester,"  her  eyes  read  mechanically. 
When  he  fell  back  and  hid  that  inscription,  his  face  was  at  peace 
again.  That  acuteness  of  terror — the  quintessence  of  the  mor- 
bidity of  a  lifetime — had  stopped  his  heart. 

She  was  terribly  shaken  by  this  sudden  and  grotesque  end. 
She  felt  his  pulse,  but  without  hope.  She  had  never  seen  human 
death  before,  but  she  had  a  vague  idea  that  you  closed  the  eyes 
and  put  pennies  on  them.  She  had  no  pennies  with  her.  She 
remembered  there  were  some  in  the  sack  he  lay  on,  pennies  and 
shillings,  but  she  did  not  dare  disturb  him  to  get  at  them^.  She 
was  obscurely  glad  she  had  not  to  wrestle  with  the  problem  of 
whether  she  ought  to  get  his  teapot  buried  with  him,  for  the 
contingency  of  his  resurrection.  Her  grandfather  w^ould  never 
surrender  it,  she  felt,  and  if  she  descended  into  his  mysterious 
underground  and  abstracted  it,  that  might  upset  his  wits  alto- 
gether. Besides,  Uncle  Lilliw^hyte's  face  was  now  taking  on  a 
strange  beauty,  as  though  his  pecuniary  anxieties  w^ere  allayed. 

But  her  nerves  were  giving  way — she  threw  open  the  door  and 
looked  out  eagerly,  not  for  the  lover,  but  for  the  man  who 
seemed  necessary  in  these  rough  moments.  The  dead  must  not 
be  left  alone,  she  knew  that,  or  she  would  have  set  out  to  meet 
Will.  Perhaps  if  she  left  him  alone,  his  shy  friend  the  fox  would 
come  trotting  in,  now  he  was  so  still.  The  parish  authorities 
must  doubtless  be  summoned  to  take  charge  of  him.  But  ought 
he  to  have  a  pauper  funeral — ought  she  not  to  steal  back  enough 
of  his  money  to  save  him  from  that  ?  But  she  remembered 
with  relief  that  he  had  expressed  indifference  as  to  what  became 
of  his  body — so  long  as  it  was  restored  to  earth,  its  good  old 
mother.  As  she  moved  a  few  paces  without,  in  her  peering  for 
WiU,  she  saw  the  blue  smoke  rising  through  the  three  top-hats, 
and  in  spite  of  the  dead  man's  doctrines  and  apprehensions,  she 
could  not  help  fancying  it  was  his  spirit  soaring  towards  the  abode 
of  the  Angel-Mother. 

When  Will  returned,  she  was  relieved  to  find  Ravens  striding 
beside  him.     That  sunny-souled  factotum,  who  had  meant  to  hie 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  567 

to  the  S kindle  wedding,  now  found  himself  transformed  instead 
into  a  corpse-watcher,  while  Will,  taking  Jinny  a  bit  of  his  v/ay, 
went  off  by  the  shortest  cuts  to  Chipstone  Poorhouse,  as  probably 
the  centre  of  authority  for  parish  funerals. 

"  There's  the  coroner,  too,"  Ravens  called  after  him. 

"  Will  there  be  an  inquest  ?  "  Jinny  asked. 

"  Must  be,"  said  Will,  and  Jinny,  alarmed  for  Martha's  sake, 
ran  back  on  pretence  of  her  basket,  and  surreptitiously  wiped 
the  bolster.  As  they  left  the  clearing,  they  heard  Ravens  singing 
in  the  hut. 

XI 

When  their  roads  parted.  Jinny  insisted  on  returning  to  her 
grandfather,  whose  excitement  now  recurred  to  her  mind.  She 
was  stiU  a  little  uneasy  about  the  pauper  funeral,  but  Will  had 
emphatically  agreed  with  her  that  the  teapot  could  not  now  be 
recaptured.  Nor  could  it  be  drawn  upon,  he  declared  :  the  old 
grabber  would  assuredly  have  counted  the  contents.  Jinny  sus- 
pected that  Will  was  pleased  rather  than  sympathetic  at  her 
having  ceased  to  be  an  heiress.  The  death  of  Uncle  Lilliwhyte, 
so  much  the  junior  of  Daniel  Quarles,  could  not  but  set  both 
their  minds  on  the  thought  of  a  similar  cutting  of  their  Gordjan 
knot,  but  the  thought — dreaded  or  w^elcome — was  not  allowed 
to  appear  in  their  conversation,  finding  expression  only  in  Will's 
aggrieved  assumption  of  the  Gaffer's  immortality.  "  Even  if  I 
was  to  strike  a  nugget  as  big  as  a  prize  marrow,  we'd  be  no 
forrarder,"  he  had  grumbled,  and  Jinny,  with  jangled  ner^'-es, 
had  accused  him  of  selfishness,  when  that  poor  old  uncle  was 
lying  dead. 

As  she  approached  Blackwater  Hall,  a  creepy  conviction  began 
to  invade  her  that  their  knot  was  already  cut :  after  that  scene 
in  the  hut  she  was  aquiver  with  presages  of  death  and  disaster. 
The  absence  of  smoke — surely  Gran'fer's  hearth  was  not  already 
cold — added  to  her  alarm.  She  remembered  again  his  effer- 
vescence at  breakfast ;  why  should  his  heart  not  stop  too  ? 
And  when  she  saw  the  broad  garden-gate  open,  and  the  house 
door  ajar,  her  own  heart  nearly  stopped.  Her  intuition,  she 
felt,  had  not  deceived  her.  Yet  he  was  nowhere  in  the  house. 
Ante-room,  living-room,  kitchen,  all  were  empty  of  him.  The 
fire  was  out.  In  the  bedroom  lay  his  telescope,  a  discarded  toy. 
She  was  about  to  sweep  the  horizon  with  it,  when  she  had  an 


568  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

inspiration.  The  smugglers'  storehouse  !  He  had  gone  down 
to  count  his  gold,  and  the  stone  had  rolled  back — Jhe  Mistletoe 
Bough  in  another  version.  Tearing  downstairs,  she  managed, 
after  much  fumbling  with  the  poker,  to  make  it  revolve,  and 
peered  down  into  the  dark  clammy  depths. 

"  Gran'fer  1  Gran'fer  !  "  she  cried.  But  only  the  dank  silence 
welled  up.  He  was  undoubtedly  dead,  lying  there  stark  among 
his  guineas.  She  was  scrambling  down  into  the  vault.  But  no  ! 
What  nonsense  !  He  must  be  pottering  about  with  a  spud, 
curry  combing  Methusalem,  or  doing  some  other  odd  job  his 
renewed  strength  permitted.  She  hauled  herself  up — at  any  rate 
that  would  postpone  the  dread  vision — and  rushed  round  to  the 
stable.  That  door  too  was  open — Methusalem  was  gone  !  So 
was  the  cart.     Nor  was  there  any  sign  of  Nip. 

In  her  relief  it  was  almost  a  pleasure  to  trace  the  wheels  on 
the  road.  But  soon  she  saw  black  again.  It  was  his  last  drive — 
the  last  drive  of  Daniel  Quarles,  Carrier.  That  was  the  meaning 
of  his  excitement  of  the  morning.  He  had  gone  out  for  the  last 
time  on  his  old  rounds,  and  would  meet  Death  on  his  driving- 
board,  face  to  face,  as  he  had  met  so  many  wintry  storms  and 
buffets.  Staying  only  to  roll  back  the  stone,  she  raced  out  in 
his  tracks. 

But  his  course  led  unluckily  to  the  Four  Wantz  Way  and 
there  she  could  no  longer  disentangle  his  cart-ruts.  However, 
Mrs.  Pennymole,  reinstated  in  her  scoured  ground  floor,  had  re- 
assuring news  enough,  though  it  carried  a  new  apprehension. 

"  I  couldn't  believe  my  eyes  when  I  catched  sight  of  him  with 
the  May  Day  favours  all  a-flyin'  and  a-flutterin'  on  whip  and 
harness,  and  lookin'  that  strong  with  a  great  old  smile  over  his 
dear  old  phiz,  and  Nip  barkin'  lit  to  bust.  '  Where  be  you  off 
to  ?  '  I  cries  as  he  dashes  by,  whippin'  past  like  fleck — I  never 
seen  Methusalem  go  that  pace,  seemin'  a'most  as  if  he  was  glad 
to  have  his  old  master  back  agen,  meanin'  no  disrespect  to  you. 
Jinny." 

"  No,  of  course  not,"  said  Jinny  impatiently.  "  But  what  did 
he  say  ?  " 

"  I  didn't  rightly  hear,  I'm  tellin'  you,  seein'  how  he  tore 
towards  the  bridge.  But  'twas  summat  about  'Lijah  1  I  yeard 
that !  " 

"  Good  heavens  1  "  cried  Jinny,  and  thanking  Mrs.  Pennymole, 
she  tore  equally  towards  the  bridge,  wondering  if  she  could  get 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  569 

a  vehicle  at  "  The  King  of  Prussia."  It  was  clear  the  old  wretch 
— there  was  really  no  other  name  for  him — had  gone  to  sell 
Methusalem  again.  Set  up  with  all  that  gold,  he  meant  to 
retire,  and,  inflamed  by  it,  he  could  not  resist  the  extra  five 
pounds  offered  by  the  vet.  And  this  time  Mr.  Skindle  would 
not  risk  impounding  her  horse,  he  would  slaughter  instanter. 
Yes,  her  eerie  premonitions  had  been  justified,  but  they  were 
warnings  about  Methusalem,  not  about  her  grandfather. 

At  the  repaired  bridge  Farmer  Gale's  dog-cart  came  along  with 
himself  and  his  wife,  but  she  was  too  shy  to  ask  for  a  lift.  Nor 
was  there  anything  to  be  got  immediately  at  "  The  King  of 
Prussia."  She  toiled  on  through  footpaths  grey-silted  from  the 
flood  till  she  reached  the  by-way  that  branched  off  to  Foxearth 
Farm.  Here  she  paused,  wondering  if  it  was  worth  while  to  go 
down  it  on  the  chance  of  finding  Barnaby's  trap  available.  And 
while  she  hesitated,  there  came  bowling  by  from  church  the 
Skindle  wedding-party  in  grand  carriages.  But  though  she 
cowered  into  the  hedge,  their  insolent  prosperity  only  soothed 
her  somewhat  by  reminding  her  that  Elijah  had  other  work 
to-day  than  killing,  and  that,  in  any  case,  there  was  now  no 
motive  for  it,  unless  perhaps  revenge.  To  her  surprise,  in  the 
rear  of  the  procession,  sharing  Barnaby's  bepranked  trap,  rode 
Will.  His  face  beside  Barnaby's  seemed  one  large  smile  :  even 
the  unexpected  sight  of  herself  would  hardly  explain  such  broad 
cheerfulness  in  a  man  who,  though  profiting  by  a  wedding,  had 
come  from  arranging  a  pauper  funeral,  not  to  mention  an  inquest. 
But  perhaps  he  was  rejoicing  at  his  escape  from  that  overblown 
Blanche. 

As  if  to  corroborate  this  interpretation,  he  jumped  down  and 
caught  her  to  him  in  the  open  daylight,  while  Barnaby's  vehicle 
sympathetically  disappeared  after  the  others  round  the  by-way. 

"  Oh,  Jinny,  Jinny  !  "  he  cried.     "  Such  a  lark  !  " 

"  But  Gran'fer !  "  she  gasped,  extricating  herself. 

He  burst  into  a  roar  of  laughter.  "  Have  you  heard  it 
already  ?  " 

"  Heard  what  ?     I'm  looking  for  Gran'fer  1  " 

"  Haven't  vou  met  him  on  the  road  ?  He  started  back  ahead 
of  me  1  " 

She  drew  a  breath  of  relief.     "  With  Methusalem  ?  " 

"  And  a  fare,"  he  grinned.  "  I  had  to  go  on  to  the  coroner 
or  else  I  too " 


570  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

But  she  no  longer  heard.  "  I  must  have  missed  him  on  the 
footpaths,"  she  said  happily. 

"  You'll  find  him  at  Mr.  Fallow's,"  he  said,  and  then  laughter 
caught  him  again  and  rapt  his  breath. 

"  But  do  speak  !     Do  speak  !     What's  this  mystery  ?  " 

"  Your  Gran'fer's  eloped  !, " 

"  What  ?  " 

He  wiped  the  tears  from  his  eyes. 

"  Do  speak  !  "     She  almost  shook  him.     "  Eloped  with  who  ?  " 

"  'Lijah  Skindle's  mother." 

."  Annie  ?  "  she  murmured  involuntarily. 

"  Carried  her  off  from  the  poorhouse  !  I  w^as  only  in  time  for 
the  tail-end  of  the  fun." 

"  But  how  could  he  get  at  her  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  tell  you  I  only  saw  it  at  the  point  the  Master 
came  into  it.  But  others  saw  more,  and  I've  picked  up  spicy 
details  from  the  paupers  and  the  wretched  porter — Jims,  you 
know." 

"  Yes,  I  know  Mr.  Jims."     A  vision  of  the  fat  little  man  in 
his  peaked  cap  and  blue  uniform  rose  before  her.     The  dismal  < 
brick  building  in  its  iron  enclosure  was  half  a  mile  before  you 
got  to  Chipstone — administered  under  the  Gilbert  Act  by  half  a 
dozen  parishes  clubbed  together. 

"  Well,  your  Gran'fer,  rigged  up  to  the  nines  with  his  best 
smock  and  beaver,  and  ribbons  on  his  whip  and  a  bunch  of  wall- 
flowers and  primroses  sticking  out  of  the  spout  of  the  teapot  he 
carried,  rings  at  the  gate,  and  when  Jims  came  to  take  in  the 
parcel,  as  he  thought,  the  old  man  pushes  through  and  makes 
for  the  wards,  Jims  runs  after  him,  and  when  he  asks  him  what 
he  wants,  he  answers,  '  Annie  !  I've  come  for  Annie  ! '  '  Who's 
Annie  ?  '  asks  Jims.  '  We  don't  keep  Annies — there's  only  old 
women,  and  it  ain't  visiting  day.'  '  Do  ye  don't  tell  me  no 
fibs,'  says  your  Gran'fer,  and  when  Jims  tries  to  stop  him,  he 
catches  him  in  the  stomach  with  his  teapot  and  leaves  him 
winded.  Then  off  he  scuttles  to  the  stairs,  and  '  Where's 
Annie  ? '  he  cries  to  an  old  pauper  woman  sweeping  them.  This 
creature  happened  to  know  Mrs.  S kindle  was  Annie,  so  she  says, 
'  She's  washing  Mr.  Robinson  in  his  bedroom.'  '  What  ?  ' 
shrieks  your  Gran'fer,  swelling  like  a  turkey-cock  with  jealousy. 
*  You  just  show  me  where  that  bedroom  is  !  '  The  frightened 
old  woman  takes  him  up  the  stone  stairs  to  the  little  yellow- 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  571 

ochred  room  where  they  had  stowed  the  old  dotard  all  by  him- 
self—I  don't  think  he's  as  old  as  your  Gran'fer,  but  he's  quite  a 
helpless  driveller — and  there,  the  old  woman  told  me,  your 
Gran'fer  gives  a  great  cry  '  Annie  !  '  and  Mrs.  Skindle  drops  the 
flannel,  and  there  they  were  crying  and  laughing  and  kissing  like 
two  children,  and  he  calling  her  ^  My  darling  !  My  beautiful 
Annie  !  " 

"  More  than  you've  ever  called  me,"  said  Jinny,  herself 
inclined  to  laugh  and  cry  and  even  to  kiss. 

The  story  was  interrupted  by  an  idyllic  interlude.  "  But  I 
expect  Gran'fer's  rather  short-sighted  without  a  telescope,"  she 
commented,  disentangling  herself  blushingly. 

"  I  was  in  the  Master's  'room,"  resumed  Will,  "  speaking  to 
him  about  the  funeral,  and  hearing  a  lot  about  the  guardians 
and  the  parish  authorities  and  such-like  grand  folk,  when  in 
rushes  Jims  and  pants  out  his  tale,  and  we  all  race  around  till 
we  find  the  old  couple  coming  down  the  staircase  with  arms  round 
each  other's  waists,  and  your  Gran'fer  tells  us  fiercely  he's  taking 
her  away,  and  opens  the  teapot  to  show  he  can  support  two  wives 
if  he  wants  to  !  '  Hold  hard  !  '  says  the  Master.  '  I  won't  stop 
you,  though  I  ought  to  have  twenty-four  hours'  notice,  because 
I  know  the  guardians  haven't  made  such  a  good  bargain  with 
Mr.  Skindle  that  they'll  try  to  keep  her,  but  you  can't  take 
away  the  parish  clothes.'  For  of  course  the  old  woman  was 
wearing  that  blue  cotton  dress " 

"  It's  got  white  stripes  if  you  look  close,"  put  in  Jinny. 

"  '  Well,  Oi  can't  take  her  away  without  clothes,'  roared  your 
Gran'fer.  He  said  he  counted  it  unrespectable  enough  that  they 
should  allow  her  to  wash  a  strange  old  man,  alone  in  a  room,  and 
that  if  they  didn't  mend  their  ways  he'd  have  a  piece  put  in  the 
paper  about  it  all.  '  Well,  let  'em  give  me  back  my  own  clothes,' 
says  Mrs.  Skindle.  '  I've  got  to  have  twenty-four  hours'  notice 
about  that,'  says  the  Master.  '  Ha,  you've  stole  'em  !  '  says 
your  Gran'fer.  '  You  be  careful  what  you're  sayin','  says  the 
Master,  bridling  up.  '  Who  wants  her  rags  and  jags  ?  '  But  in 
the  end  it  was  all  settled  friendlywise — your  Gran'fer  buying  up 
some  of  the  cast-off  grandeur  of  the  matron's  (they  drove  a  good 
bargain  with  your  Gran'fer,  the  pair  of  screws,  but  he  was  free 
and  flush  with  his  teapot),  and  off  the  happy  pair  went  at  last, 
the  bride  as  spruced  up  as  the  bridegroom,  and  I  saw  him  hand 
her   into    the  wedding-cart    with    her    bouquet,    while    the  old 


572  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

gentlemen  in   the   corduroys   and  the   old  ladies  in   blue,   and  | 
especially  the  little  orphans,  raised  a  cheer.     Even  Jims  waved. 
I  expect  he'd  had  a  drop  out  of  the  teapot." 

"  Daniel  Quarles,  Carrier-Off,"  laughed  Jinny,  half  hysterically, 
for  scandalized  and  startled  though  she  was,  a  rosy  light,  whose 
source  was  yet  unclear  to  her,  seemed  rising  on  her  horizon. 

"  I  went  up  to  the  cart  under  pretence  of  patting  Nip,"  Will 
went  on,  "  and  asked  the  old  boy  where  he  was  off  to.  '  Home, 
of  course,'  he  answers  friendly.  '  You  should  be  going  to  chapel  \ 
first,  you  old  rip,'  I  told  him.  *  We're  going  to  be  married  in  ' 
church,'  answers  Mrs.  Skindle  stiffly.  *  I'm  Church  of  England.' 
'  That's  all  right,  Annie,'  he  says,  patting  her  hand,  '  we'll  look 
in  on  Mr.  Fallow  about  they  banns,'  and  singing  *  Oi'm  Seventeen 
come  Sunday,'  drives  off  with  her." 

But  Jinny  refused  to  sympathize  with  the  course  of  true  love. 
"  He's  not  really  going  to  marry  her  ?  "  she  now  cried.  ''  But 
that's  dreadful  !  " 

"  You  scandalous  creature  !  It  would  be  more  dreadful  if  he 
didn't  !  " 

"  But  at  his  age  !  " 

"  Why,  he's  quite  young  yet,"  laughed  Will.  "  One  hundred 
and  fifty-two  is  his  little  span,  remember." 

She  let  herself  relax  under  his  laughter.  ''  Will  they  ring  a 
peal  of  Grandsire  Triples  at  his  wedding  ?  "  she  asked  whim- 
sically. Then  with  renewed  anxiety  :  "  Oh,  but  I  do  hope  it 
hasn't  all  excited  him  too  much,"  she  cried.  "  I'd  best  get 
home  as  quick  as  possible." 

"  Home  ?     You  don't  mean  Blackwater  Hall  ?  " 

"  Where  else  ?  " 

"  You  can't  go  there.  As  your  Gran'fer  remarked  to  the 
Master,  that's  no  place  for  a  respectable  female." 

She  stared  at  him.  "  Besides,"  he  said,  ''  you  don't  want  to 
interfere  with  the  young  couple." 

"  But  I've  not  cooked  the  dinner  !  " 

"  Let  the  bride  do  that.  She's  as  strong  as  a  horse.  It's  the 
best  thing  that  could  have  happened  for  both  of  'em.  After 
fending  for  all  of  us  at  Rosemary  Villa,  Blackwater  Hall  will  be 
a  hoHday  to  her." 

"  But  I  must  go  and  see  about  things.  She  won't  know  where 
anything  is.  And  even  if  she  cooks  the  dinner,  she'll  want  my 
apron.     She  can't  spoil  her  fineries." 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  573 

"  That's  enough,"  he  said  sternly.  "  I  don't  often  quote  my 
father,  but  I'm  bound  to  say  some  people  are  near-sighted  and 
can't  see  God,  their  friend.  You've  done  with  Black  water 
Hall." 

"  But  where  am  I  to  go  then  ?  " 

He  laughed.  "  And  what  about  Frog  Farm  ?  "  He  took  her 
arm.  "  And  we,  too,  must  get  tied  up  as  soon  as  possible.  No, 
Jinny,  we  can't  do  better  than  follow  in  your  Gran'fer's  foot- 
steps. The  way  he  held  that  grey-headed  old  woman's  hand 
in  the  wedding-cart,  while  I — you're  right,  I  haven't  called  you 
'beautiful'  enough."  He  paused  to  do  so  without  words, 
"  The  old  boy's  taught  me  a  lesson,  dashing  in  like  that,  while 
I've  been  sitting  growling  and  grizzling  and  wasting  our  best 
years." 

"  But  you  see.  Will,  it  couldn't  be  before.  And  he  was  sacri- 
ficing himself  to  me,  poor  Gran'fer,  if  he  wanted  her  so  badly 
all  the  time.  Just  see  how  he  waited  till  he  could  support 
her  !  " 

"  On  your  money !  Under  the  roof  you  re-thatched  for 
him  !  " 

"  It  wasn't  my  money.     And  it  was  Ravens  who  did  the  roof." 

"  You  paid  for  it !  " 

"  No,  I  didn't,"  she  protested. 

''  Why  not  ?  " 

"  He  won't  send  me  in  the  bill." 

"  Oh,  won't  he  !  "  WiU  clenched  his  fist.  "  I'll  joUy  soon 
stop  his  singing  if  he  don't  hurry  up  with  it  !  And  why  didn't 
you  ask  me  to  mend  your  thatch  ?  " 

"  You  couldn't  come  in." 

''  You  don't  come  in  to  the  roof." 

"  That  might  have  been  a  way  of  coming  in,"  she  laughed, 
*'  it  was  so  leaky.  Anyhow  you  might  have  done  Uncle  Lilli- 
whyte's — it  is  his  money  that  has  saved  us  all." 

"  In  a  roundabout  way,"  he  admitted. 

She  snuggled  to  him.  Happiness,  which  had  hitherto  seemed 
like  the  soaped  pig  at  village  sports,  was  seizable  at  last.  "  Won't 
it  be  wonderful  when  we're  in  the  hut  !  "  she  said. 

He  opened  his  eyes.  "  You  don't  propose  to  live  in  Uncle 
Lilliwhyte's  hut  with  the  three  top-hats  I  " 

"  Of  course  not,"  she  said,  blushing.  "  It's  in  Australia. 
There's  just  poles  stuck  in  the  ground." 


574  JINNY  THE  CARRIER 

"^  Why,  when  have  you  been  in  Australia  ?  " 

"Never  you  mind  !  You  see,  I've  already  saved  up  a  little 
towards  my  passage  and " 

But  her  words  died  on  his  lips.  "  I  don't  know  that  we  need 
pull  up  our  stakes,"  he  said  when  he  released  her.  "  Farmer 
Gale's  looking  for  a  looker." 

"  You  don't  really  mean  that  ?  "  she  said. 

"  He  does,  anyhow.  I  just  met  him  in  his  dog-cart  and  he's 
mad  about  his  flood-losses.  *  You  should  have  paid  a  good  man,' 
I  told  the  hunks  to  his  head." 

"  Oh,  but.  Will,"  she  said,  shrinking,  "  you  don't  like  Farmer 
Gale  !  " 

"  Well,  he's  safely  married  now,  and  after  all,  my  father  had 
the  place  first.  ...  It  belongs  to  the  family.  .  .  .  Anyhow,"  he 
broke  off  masterfully,  "  I'd  pay  my  wife's  passage-money." 

"  Then  I'll  be  able  to  buy  Methusalem,"  she  said  in  cheerful 
submission.  "  He's  only  five  pounds — I  suppose  your  father 
would  take  care  of  him." 

"  Rather  I     It  would  be  a  refuge  from  the  New  Jerusalem." 

"  But  we'll  take  Nip  with  us,  sweetheart — ^it  won't  be  the  gold- 
fields,  you  know,  just  a  farm.  And  we  can  take  over  the  Bidlake 
girls  too,  if  you  like." 

"  liOrd,  what  a  crowd  1  But  I  don't  see  Nip  on  an  emigrant 
ship." 

"  Haven't  I  heard  of  dog-watches  ?  "  she  smiled. 

"  I  guess  you'd  smuggle  him  in  somehow,"  he  laughed.  "  I've 
noticed  you  generally  get  your  own  way.  And  captains  are 
but  men." 

"  I  thought  they  were  sea-dogs,"  she  laughed. 

"  You  generally  get  the  last  word  too,"  he  grumbled  with 
adoring  admiration.  "  But  I  tell  you.  Jinny,  though  there  may 
be  more  money,  all  these  new  countries  are  terribly  raw." 

"  I  know — '  no  longer  an  egg,  not  yet  a  bird,  only  a  smell,'  " 
she  quoted  with  wistful  humour,  and  these  words  of  his  in  the 
English  wood  last  May  evoked  again  for  both  of  them  all  the 
magic  of  their  love  at  its  dawning. 

They  walked  on  in  silence  towards  Frog  Farm.  After  all, 
with  their  united  treasure  of  youth,  energy,  and  love,  their  live- 
lihood was  no  grave  problem.  Larks  were  carolling,  the  little 
wrens  piping,  and  ringdoves  calling,  calling,  for  the  Spring  was 
near  after  all,  and  the  daffodils  had  already  come.     It  seemed 


THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  575 

indeed  a  vain  snapping  of  the  heart-strings  to  leave  such  a  home- 
land. 

"  That'll  be  winter  soon  in  Australia,"  mused  Will  tenaciously. 

"  Not  if  we  were  together,"  Jinny  whispered,  although  the 
more  she  pondered  during  that  wonderful  walk  the  more  the 
Antipodes  receded  to  their  geographical  distance,  the  more 
shadowy  grew  the  danger  of  falling  off  her  planet.  But,  however 
they  were  to  decide,  she  could  see  no  reason — once  her  grand- 
father's wedding-bells  had  rung — why  they  should  not  all  live — 
wherever  they  all  lived — happy  ever  after. 


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